Effect of meniscus curvature on apparent thermal slip

We analytically consider the effect of meniscus curvature on heat transfer to laminar flow across structured surfaces. The surfaces considered are composed of ridges. Curvature of the menisci, which separates liquid in the Cassie state and gas trapped in cavities between the ridges, results from the pressure difference between the liquid and the gas. A boundary perturbation approach is used to develop expressions that account for the change in the temperature field in the limit of small curvature of a meniscus. The meniscus is considered adiabatic and a constant heat flux boundary condition is prescribed at the tips of the ridges in a semi-infinite and periodic domain. A solution for a constant temperature ridge is also presented using existing results from a mathematically equivalent hydrodynamic problem. We provide approximate expressions for the apparent thermal slip length as function of solid fraction over a range of small meniscus protrusion angles. Numerical results show good agreement with the perturbation results for protrusion angles up to ± 20 deg