Effects of slip length and hydraulic diameter on hydraulic entrance length of microchannels with superhydrophobic surfaces.

This paper investigated effects of slip length and hydraulic diameter on the hydraulic entrance length of laminar flow in superhydrophobic microchannels. Numerical investigations were performed for square microchannels with Re ranging between 0.1 and 1000. It is found that superhydrophobic microchannels have a longer hydraulic entrance length than that of conventional ones by nearly 26.62% at a low Re. The dimensionless hydraulic entrance length slightly increases with the increasing slip length at approximately Re<10, and does not vary with the hydraulic diameter. A new correlation to predict the entrance length in square microchannels with different slip lengths was developed, which has a satisfying predictive performance with a mean absolute relative deviation of 5.69%. The results not only ascertain the flow characteristics of superhydrophobic microchannels, but also suggest that super hydrophobic microchannels have more significant advantages for heat transfer enhancement at a low Re. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]