Effect of Non-uniform Heating on Electroosmotic Flow Through Microchannel

Abstract

The effect of non-uniform heating on the heat transfer characteristics for electroosmotic flow through a microchannel has been investigated numerically. The temperature field and Nusselt number are studied by changing the normalized wavelength of non-uniform heat flux $\left( \gamma \right)$ and thermal Peclet number $\left( {\text{Pe}} \right)$ in the range of $1.5 \le \gamma \le 6$ and $1 \le {\text{Pe}} \le 100$, respectively. It is found that the intensity of maximum temperature reduces for non-uniform heating as compared to the uniform heating. The maxima of local Nusselt number increases with a decrease in the wavelength of the non-uniform heat flux. The critical Peclet number $\left( {{\text{Pe}}_{\text{c}} } \right)$ is found such that average Nusselt number shows the monotonic and non-monotonic variation with $\gamma$.