Study on the Heat Reduction Effect of Biomimetic Unidirectional Transporting Channels Inspired by Nepenthes alata

Heat control has been a momentous problem in engineering areas which include manufacturing, aeronautics, microchips and so forth for a considerable amount of time. The control of material for thermal deformation, effective cooling are the key components of the aero crafts and compactly laid out microchips are urgently needed for improvement. In a micro-scale, researchers are mainly focused on the mechanism, design, improvement and heat transfer of straight channels other than developing other types of channels. A previous study on the carnivorous plant, Nepenthes alata, indicates that the water can be transported continuously and directionally on the surface of the rim of the pitcher because of its multi-scale structures. Meanwhile, the transporting speed is much higher than what was thought previously. Inspired by this unique phenomenon, the heat management ability of this biological micro channel is investigated in this research. Firstly, based on existing studies, the features of the biological channels are extracted. Then, the unidirectional channels are designed and fabricated by elliptical vibration cutting accordingly. The experimental platform for thermal control was established consequently. Both bio-inspired and straight triangular channels of the same depth and width were set for comparison. Through the comparative experiments, it is concluded preliminarily that the critical point of heat transfer performance of the two channels exists, and the biomimetic structure can improve and strengthen the cooling effects at a large flow rate because of the unique geometric structure. The temperature reduction of the bio-inspired channels can be increased by up to 84 percent compared with straight channels in a single experiment when heated up to 150 centigrade.