Gas Microflows in the Slip Flow Regime: A Critical Review on Convective Heat Transfer

Accurate modeling of gas microvection is crucial for a lot of MEMS applications (microheat exchangers, pressure gauges, fluidic microactuators for active control of aerodynamic flows, mass flow and temperature microsensors, micropumps, and microsystems for mixing or separation for local gas analysis, mass spectrometers, vacuum, and dosing valves…). Gas flows in microsystems are often in the slip flow regime, characterized by a moderate rarefaction with a Knudsen number of the order of 10−2–10−1. In this regime, velocity slip and temperature jump at the walls play a major role in heat transfer. This paper presents a state of the art review on convective heat transfer in microchannels, focusing on rarefaction effects in the slip flow regime. Analytical and numerical models are compared for various microchannel geometries and heat transfer conditions (constant heat flux or constant wall temperature). The validity of simplifying assumptions is detailed and the role played by the kind of velocity slip and temperature jump boundary conditions is shown. The influence of specific effects, such as viscous dissipation, axial conduction and variable fluid properties is also discussed.