Heat Transfer Engineering, Vol.30, No.1-2, 62-69, 2009
Microchannel roughness effects: A close-up view
The effect of wall roughness on laminar flows may be important in micro-sized channels though it is often neglected in macro-sized flow geometries. Based on entropy production considerations, we show how its influence can be determined theoretically. The appropriate definition of the wall location when there is no obvious choice (like for smooth walls) is also discussed. This definition has an immediate impact on the actual values of the Poiseuille number.