Transient Thermal Field Measurements in a High Aspect Ratio Channel Related to Transient Thermochromic Liquid Crystal Experiments

Measurements of transient fluid temperature distributions were made in a high aspect ratio (4:1) internally ribbed two-pass channel relating to the measurement of heat transfer using the transient thermochromic liquid crystal (TLC) technique. The temperature field was measured at several positions leading up to and around the 180 deg bend in a two-passage channel to account for variations in the bulk temperature used as a reference for the transient TLC technique. The results showed that the normalized distribution of the temperature field was time invariant, an important result for the validation of heat transfer results using the transient TLC method. The normalized fluid temperature field was shown to be independent of the inlet temperature step and relatively independent of channel Reynolds number. Fluid temperature distributions were shown to be consistent over the length of the inlet channel; however, temperature field measurements made downstream of the bend exhibited a strong asymmetry. Finally, local temperature distributions were used to adjust the reference temperature used in calculating heat transfer coefficient distributions and to show the behavior of heat transfer due to 180 deg bends. [DOI: 10.1115/1.3106028]