Heat Transfer Dynamics in Wavy Surface Systems

Heat transfer over periodically undulated surfaces has gained prominence owing to its potential for enhanced convective performance in applications such as heat exchangers, electronics cooling, solar collectors and biomedical implants. The presence of surface waviness alters boundary-layer development, induces streamwise vortices and promotes mixing, thereby increasing local heat flux compared with flat geometries. The combination of buoyancy forces, flow inertia and thermal diffusion gives rise to complex temperature fields, governed by parameters including wave amplitude and wavelength, fluid properties encapsulated by the Prandtl and Nusselt numbers, and supplementary influences such as magnetic fields, porous matrices or nanoparticle suspensions. Recent advances in coordinate-transformation techniques and high-resolution numerical schemes have delivered accurate predictions of skin friction, entropy generation and temperature distributions. These insights support the design of wavy-surface components that balance thermal efficiency against pressure drop and irreversibility, with global relevance to energy conversion, process engineering and thermal management of micro-devices.

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Heat Transfer Dynamics in Wavy Surface Systems publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in heat transfer dynamics in wavy surface systems across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Wavy surface: A solid boundary characterised by periodic undulations defined by amplitude and wavelength, influencing flow separation and mixing.

Nusselt number (Nu): Dimensionless measure of convective versus conductive heat transfer at a surface.

Prandtl number (Pr): Ratio of momentum diffusivity to thermal diffusivity, indicating relative thickness of velocity and thermal boundary layers.

Brinkman number (Br): Dimensionless group quantifying the effect of viscous dissipation on the energy equation within a fluid.

Eckert number (Ec): Ratio of kinetic energy to thermal energy, indicating the significance of viscous heating in high-speed flows.

Entropy generation: A metric of thermodynamic irreversibility due to heat transfer and viscous effects, minimised to improve system efficiency.

Nanofluid: A fluid suspension of nanoparticles designed to enhance thermal conductivity and convective heat-transfer performance.

References

1. Initially reactive and concentrated generalized fluid wavy flow with the applications of disorder theory and magnetic field: A computational study. Results in Chemistry (2024).
2. Analysis of Reciprocal Thermal Conductivity on Free Convection Flow along a Wavy Vertical Surface. Advances in Mathematical Physics (2022).
3. Viscous Dissipation Effect in the Free Convection of Non‐Newtonian Fluid with Heat Generation or Absorption Effect on the Vertical Wavy Surface. Journal of Applied Mathematics (2021).