Recent Advances in Single and Multiphase Flows in Microchannels

Dear Colleagues,

Heat and mass transport in microchannels is key to diverse applications that span many disciplines in science and engineering, from mechanical, chemical, energy, and environmental engineering, to biological and medical science.

Notable examples range from thermal management of power electronics, to mobilisation of pollutants in unsaturated soil, capillary-cleaning of fouling and biofilms, microencapsulation for drug delivery, medical treatment of diseased tissues, deformability of cells in biofluids, and (bio)chemical microreactor technology, to name a few.

Within microchannels, unlike large-scale flows, phenomena such as viscous heating, surface tension, interfacial resistance to heat and mass transfer, van der Waals interactions, diffusiophoresis, and diffusioosmosis can have dominant effects on the transport mechanisms.

Although recent advances in microfabrication techniques such as micromilling, embossing technology, additive manufacturing, and photolithography have allowed substantial reduction to microchannel size and manufacturing cost, the understanding of the underlying flow physics is still plagued with significant uncertainty.

Therefore, the new insight into the governing flow/heat transfer mechanisms in the microscale, required for the optimal development, design, and operation of the next-generation microfluidic devices, is the driving motivation of this Special Issue.

This Special Issue welcomes contributions that focus on recent developments in single and multiphase flows in microchannels, including (but not restricted to) gas–liquid, liquid–liquid, particle-laden and colloidal-suspension flows, the impact of channel geometry on fluid dynamics and heat transfer, fundamental aspects of thin-film dynamics and evaporation, flow boiling heat transfer and critical heat flux, flow boiling instabilities in multimicrochannel evaporators, the enhancement of single-phase cooling, microstructured surfaces, thermally- and surfactant-driven Marangoni flows, electrokinetics, diffusiophoresis, diffusioosmosis, and theoretical approaches such as lubrication theory and asymptotics.

We invite contributions in all areas of experimental and computational methods, multiscale models, and theoretical approaches that focus on the aforementioned mechanisms dominated by the microscale.

Dr. Beatrice Pulvirenti
Dr. Mirco Magnini
Guest Editors

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