Liquid Single-Phase Flow in an Array of Micro-Pin-Fins—Part II: Pressure Drop Characteristics

This Technical Brief is Part II of a two-part study concerning water single-phase pressure drop and heat transfer in an array of staggered micro-pin-fins. This brief reports the pressure drop results. Both adiabatic and diabatic tests were conducted. Six previous friction factor correlations for low Reynolds number (Re<1000) flow in conventional and micro-pin-fin arrays were examined and found underpredicting the adiabatic data except the correlation by Short et al. (2002, “Performance of Pin Fin Cast Aluminum Coldwalls, Part 1: Friction Factor Correlation,” J. Thermophys. Heat Transfer, 16(3), pp. 389–396), which overpredicts the data. A new power-law type of correlation was developed, which showed good agreement with both adiabatic and diabatic data.