Experimental study on axial wall heat conduction for convective heat transfer in stainless steel microtube

Distilled water and nitrogen gas used as the working fluids flow through the stainless steel microtube with inner diameter 168 μm outer diameter 406 μm. Using the Joule heating, the wall temperature field photos of the microtube is acquired by employing an IR camera and the temperature and the volume flow rate of the inlet and the outlet of microtube are measured. A correlation between the axial wall heat conduction and the convective heat transfer is obtained by theoretical analysis based on the experimental results. The investigative results clearly show that the axial heat conduction can reduce the convective heat transfer in the stainless steel microtube and the decrement may reach 2% compared to the convective heat transfer when the working fluid is nitrogen gas, however, the decrement can be neglected for distilled water as the working fluid.