Molecular dynamics study of convective heat transfer mechanism in a nano heat exchanger

Abstract

With the rapid development of micro/nano electro-mechanical systems, the convective heat transfer at the micro/nanoscale has been widely studied for the thermal management of micro/nano devices. Here we investigate the convective heat transfer mechanism of a nano heat exchanger by the employment of molecular dynamics simulation with a modified thermal pump method. First, the temperature jump and velocity slip are observed at the wall–fluid interfaces of the nano heat exchanger. Moreover, the larger Kapitza resistance in the entrance region weakens the convective heat transfer. Second, the heat transfer performance of the nano heat exchanger can be improved by increasing the surface wettability of the solid walls owing to more fluid atoms being involved in heat transport at the walls when the wall–fluid interaction is enhanced. Meanwhile, the strong surface wettability results in the appearance of the quasi-solid fluid layers, which improves the heat transfer between walls and fluids. Finally, we point out that when the surface wettability of the nano heat exchanger is weak, the heat transfer of the hot fluid side is better than that of the cold fluid side, while the convective heat transfer performances of the cold and hot fluid sides are reversed when the surface wettability is strong. This is because of the feebler temperature jump of the hot fluid side when wall–fluid interaction is small and the greater velocity slip of the cold fluid side for walls with large wall–fluid interaction.