Numerical and experimental study of the influence of extended surfaces in rectangular channel subjected to constant heat flux

The current paper reports the impact of variation of ribs' pitch distance in the case of laminar flow and forced convection heat transfer upon flow characteristics in a rectangular channel experimentally and numerically. The thermal behavior of the ribbed channel with water as a working fluid was measured experimentally and compared to numerical simulations performed using Galerkin finite element method under the same operating and boundary conditions. Numerical analysis has been extended to investigate the entire ribbed channel with the presence of nano-particles in the base fluid to predict the performance of the heat transfer process with interaction with extended geometries. The analysis was done keeping heat flux constant at the bottom boundary condition. The impacts of the rib pitch-to-height ratio (p/e = 2.5, 3.125, 3.75, 4.375, and 5), nano-particle volume concentration (0% <= phi <= 4%), also Reynolds numbers (427.44 to 1282. 9), were all examined in the present study. The results show a good coincidence between the numerical and experimental study with a maximum deviation was nearly 3%. The main findings show that when the nano-fluid volume fraction increases from 0% to 4%, the average Nusselt number for all aspect ratios increases too. Meanwhile, the average skin friction decreases as the Reynolds number increase for different values of AR. Furthermore, the results revealed that the water - aluminum oxide nano-fluid with the concentration phi = 0.04 aid to improve the coefficient of heat transfer by 5% higher than the case of phi = 0.02, and up to 9.4% compared to pure water (phi = 0) due to an increase in viscosity. Finally, the current work shows that these extended surfaces with the use of nano-fluids can remarkably improve heat transfer properties with barely increased friction, making them suitable candidates for the development of efficient heat exchanger devices.