NUMERICAL STUDY OF PRESSURE DROP AND FLUID FRICTION IN LAMINAR FLOW RECTANGULAR MICROCHANNELS

Abstract

An incompressible three dimensional continuity and Navier-Stokes (momentumequations) equations are numerically solved to obtain the pressure drop and fluid friction inlaminar steady state micro-channel flow of water. The governing equations are solved byusing SIMPLE algorithm with finite volume method and FORTRAN code to obtain pressurefield in rectangular micro-channel and then from the pressure field both friction factor f andfriction constant Cf are obtained.The results showed that the factors affecting the pressure drop, friction factor f andfriction constant Cf are; channel length L, Reynolds number Re, aspect ratio α, channelvolume chV and hydraulic diameter hD . Increasing of channel length L leads to increaseeach pressure drop, f and Cf. On other hand, increasing of Re leads to increase pressure dropand decrease the f, while the Cf increase with low value of Re (Re less than 50) and thennearby with approximately constant value. Moreover, increasing of α, chV and hD eachseparately leads to decrease pressure drop and increase both f and Cf.