Turbulent Heat Transfer Augmentation Using Microscale Disturbances Inside the Viscous Sublayer

We report here on an experimental study of heat transfer augmentation in turbulent flow. Enhancement strategies employed in this investigation are based on the near-wall mixing processes induced in the sublayer through appropriate wall and near-wall streamwise-periodic disturbances. Experiments are performed in a low-turbulence wind-tunnel with a high-aspect-ratio rectangular channel having either (a) two-dimensional periodic microgrooves on the wall, or (b) two-dimensional microcylinders placed in the immediate vicinity of the wall. It is found that micro-disturbances placed inside the sublayer induce favorable heat-transport augmentation with respect to the smooth-wall case, in that near-analogous momentum and heat transfer behavior are preserved; a roughly commensurate increase in heat and momentum transport is termed favorable in that it leads to a reduction in the pumping power penalty at fixed heat removal rate. The study shows that this favorable performance of microcylinder-equipped channel flows is achieved for microcylinders placed inside y+ ≃20, implying a dependence of the optimal position and size on Reynolds number. For microgrooved channel flows, favorable augmentation is obtained for a wider range of Reynolds numbers; however, optimal enhancement still requires a matching of geometric perturbation with the sublayer scale.