Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Droplet Cooling

Dropwise cooling represents a major subject of interest for both academic and industrial researches. The present work is focused on investigating the thermal transient occurring as two water droplets are gently released (We < 30) onto a heated solid surface. This latter has been kept at initial temperature lower than 373.15 K to analyze the single-phase-evaporation regime. To the purpose, both an experimental and a numerical approach have conveniently been employed. Infrared thermography has been used to evaluate the temperature trend at the solid-liquid interface: an experimental facility has been built to carry out measurements from below, thus realizing a fully non-intrusive approach. A transparent-crystal disk has been inserted to serve as the solid substrate; its upper surface has been painted by a black coating, thus providing a black-body surface as the solid-liquid interface. The infrared thermocamera has been placed below and perpendicular to that surface; temperature has been thereby measured, being emissivity a known parameter. A numerical code has been developed to predict the involved physical phenomena: temperature trend, evaporation time and evaporated flux result from discretizing the three-dimensional energy-diffusion equation by the finite-volume method. Moreover, the model is based on structured non-uniform mesh to adapt to the occurring temperature gradients. Very good agreement is shown between experimental and numerical outcomes in terms of thermal transient and recovery.

Experimental Investigation of Low Weber Number Post-Impact Drop Spreading on Solid Substrates

The post-impact spreading and recoil behaviors of droplets of pure liquids (water and ethanol) and aqueous solution of Triton X-100 (a surfactant) on a dry horizontal hydrophilic (glass) substrate are investigated for low Weber numbers. The evolution of drop shape during spreading and recoil are captured using a high-speed (4,000 frames per second) digital video camera. Digital image-processing was used to determine the spread and height of the liquid film on the surface from each frame. Unlike pure liquids, the liquid-gas interfacial tension for surfactant solution is a function of surface age, where surface tension is that of the solvent at zero time and then reaches an equilibrium value with increasing surface age. Furthermore, the equilibrium surface tension is a function of the surfactant concentration, which decreases from that of the solvent at zero concentration to that at the critical micelle concentration (CMC), and remains essentially constant thereafter. The surface tension of aqueous Triton X-100 solution varies from that of pure water to nearly that of ethanol. As such the comparison of transient droplet-impact-spreading-recoil behavior of the three liquids, or their temporal variations of the spread and the flattening factor, provides a basis for understanding the role of dynamic surface tension and surface wettability.

Influence of Flow Acceleration on Convection Heat Transfer of CO2 at Supercritical Pressures and Air in a Vertical Micro Tube

The convection heat transfer of CO2 at supercritical pressures in a 0.0992 mm diameter vertical tube at relatively high Reynolds numbers (Rein = 6500), various heat fluxes and flow directions are investigated experimentally and numerically. The effects of buoyancy and flow acceleration resulting from the dramatic property variations are studied. The Results show that the local wall temperature varied non-linearly for both upward and downward flow when the heat flux was high. The difference in the local wall temperature between upward and downward flow is very small when the other test conditions are held the same, which indicates that for supercritical CO2 flowing in a micro tube as employed in this study, the buoyancy effect on the convection heat transfer is insignificant and the flow acceleration induced by the axial density variation with temperature is the main factor leading to the abnormal local wall temperature distribution at high heat fluxes. The predicted temperatures using the LB low Reynolds number turbulence model correspond well with the measured data. To further study the influence of flow acceleration on the convection heat transfer, air is also used as the working fluid to numerically investigate the fluid flow and heat transfer in the vertical micro tube. The results show that the effect of compressibility on the fluid flow and heat transfer of air in the vertical micro tube is significant but that the influence of thermal flow acceleration on convection heat transfer of air in a vertical micro tube is insignificant.

Experimental Investigation of Metal-Diamond Thermal Interface Conductance With Different Diamond Surface Terminations

Synthetic diamond has potential as a heat spreading material due to its uniquely high thermal conductivity. In small-scale devices, interfaces can dominate the resistance to heat transport, and thus play an important role in determining device performance. Here we use transient thermoreflectance techniques to measure the thermal interface conductance at metal-diamond interfaces. We study single crystal diamond samples with various surface terminations. We measure thermal interface conductance values over a range of temperatures from 88 K to 300 K, and find roughly 60 percent higher thermal interface conductance between Al and oxygenated diamond samples as compared to hydrogen terminated samples. The results reported here will be useful for device design and for advancing models of interfacial heat transport.

Effect of Water Temperature on Spray Cooling Heat Transfer on Hot Steel Plate

Water spray cooling is an important technology which has been used in a variety of engineering applications for cooling of materials from high-temperature nominally up to 900°C, especially in steelmaking processes and heat treatment in hot metals. The effects of cooling water temperature on spray cooling are significant for hot steel plate cooling applications. The local heat flux measurements are introduced by a novel experimental technique in which test block assemblies with cartridge heaters and thermocouples are used to measure the heat flux distribution on the surface of hot steel plate as a function of heat flux gauge. The spray is produced from a fullcone nozzle and experiments are performed at fixed water impact density of G and fixed nozzle-to-target spacing. The results show that effects of water temperature on forced boiling heat transfer characteristics are presented for five different water temperatures between 5 to 45°C. The local heat flux curves and heat transfer coefficients are also provided to a benchmark data for the actual spray cooling of hot steel plate cooling applications.

Numerical Simulation of Thermal Conductivity of Nanofluids

The recent first-principle model shows a dual-phase-lagging heat conduction in nanofluids at the macroscale. The macroscopic heat-conduction behavior and the thermal conductivity of nanofluids are determined by their molecular physics and microscale physics. We examine numerically effects of particle-fluid thermal conductivity ratio, particle volume fraction, shape, aggregation, and size distribution on macroscale thermal properties for nine types of nanofluids, without considering the interfacial thermal resistance and dynamic processes on particle-fluid interfaces and particle-particle contacting surfaces. The particle radius of gyration and non-dimensional particle-fluid interfacial area in the unit cell are two very important parameters in characterizing the effect of particles’ geometrical structures on thermal conductivity of nanofluids. Nanofluids containing cross-particle networks have conductivity which practically reaches the Hashin-Shtrikman bounds. Moreover, particle aggregation influences the effective thermal conductivity only when the distance between particles is less than the particle dimension. Uniformly-sized particles are desirable for the conductivity enhancement, although to a limited extent.

Measurement of Liquid Film Thickness in Micro Tube Annular Flow

Heat transfer in micro scale two-phase flow attracts large attention since it can achieve large heat transfer area per density. At high quality, annular flow becomes one of the major flow regimes in micro two-phase flow. Heat is transferred by evaporation or condensation of the liquid film, which are the dominant mechanisms of micro scale heat transfer. Therefore, liquid film thickness is one of the most important parameters in modeling the phenomena. In macro tubes, large numbers of researches have been conducted to investigate the liquid film thickness. However, in micro tubes, quantitative information for the annular liquid film thickness is still limited. In the present study, annular liquid film thickness is measured using a confocal method, which is used in the previous study [1, 2]. Glass tubes with inner diameters of 0.3, 0.5 and 1.0 mm are used. Degassed water and FC40 are used as working fluids, and the total mass flux is varied from G = 100 to 500 kg/m2s. Liquid film thickness is measured by laser confocal displacement meter (LCDM), and the liquid-gas interface profile is observed by a high-speed camera. Mean liquid film thickness is then plotted against quality for different flow rates and tube diameters. Mean thickness data is compared with the smooth annular film model of Revellin et al. [3]. Annular film model predictions overestimated the experimental values especially at low quality. It is considered that this overestimation is attributed to the disturbances caused by the interface ripples.

Numerical Simulation of Heat Transfer Mechanisms in Spray Cooling

A primary mechanism of heat transfer in spray cooling is the impingement of numerous droplets onto a heated surface. This mechanism is isolated in the present and ongoing work by numerically simulating the impact of a single train of FC-72 droplets employing an implicit free surface capturing methodology. The droplet frequency and velocity ranges from 2000–4000 Hz, and 0.5–2 m/s, respectively, with a fixed drop size of 239 μm. This gives a corresponding Weber and Reynolds range of 10–170 and 330–1300, respectively. Results show that the impingement zone is largely free of phase change effects due to the efficient suppression of the local temperature field well below the saturated value. Due in part to the relatively high value of the Prandtl number and the compression of the boundary layer from the impingement flow, a cell size on the order of 1 μm is necessary to adequately capture the heat transfer dynamics. It is shown that the cooling behavior increases in relation to increasing frequency and impact velocity, but is most sensitive to velocity. In fact, for sufficiently low velocities the calculations show that the momentum imparted on the film is insufficient to maintain a near stationary liquid crown. The consequence is a noticeable penalty on the cooling behavior.

Joule Heating Induced Temperature Gradient Focusing for Microfluidic Concentration of Samples

Microfluidic concentration of sample species is achieved using the temperature gradient focusing (TGF) in a microchannel with a step change in the cross-section under a pure direct current (DC) field or a combined alternating current (AC) and DC electric field. Experiments were carried out to study the effects of applied voltage, buffer concentration and channel size on sample concentration in the TGF processes. These effects were analyzed and summarized using a dimensionless Joule number that is introduced in this study. In addition, Joule number effect in the Poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS)/PDMS microdevice was compared with the PDMS/Glass microdevice. A more than 450-fold concentration enhancement was obtained within 75 seconds in the PDMS/PDMS microdevice. Results also showed that the high frequency AC electric field which contributes to produce the temperature gradient and reduces the required DC voltage for the sample concentration. The lower DC voltage has generated slower electroosmotic flow (EOF), which reduces the backpressure effect associated with the finite reservoir size. Finally, a more than 2500-fold concentration enhancement was obtained within 14 minutes in the PDMS/PDMS microdevice, which was a great achievement in this TGF technique using inherent Joule heating effects.

Laminar Flow Forced Convection Heat Transfer Behavior of Phase Change Material Fluid in Microchannels With Staggered Pins

Microchannels have been extensively studied for electronic cooling applications ever since they were found to be effective in removing high heat flux from small areas. Many configurations of microchannels have been studied and compared for their effectiveness in heat removal. However, there is little data available in the literature on the use of pins in microchannels. Staggered pins in microchannels have higher heat removal characteristics because of the continuous breaking and formation of the boundary layer, but they also exhibit higher pressure drop because pins act as flow obstructions. This paper presents numerical results of two characteristic staggered pins (square and circular) in microchannels. The heat transfer performance of a single phase fluid in microchannels with staggered pins, and the corresponding pressure drop characteristics are also presented. An effective specific heat capacity model was used to account for the phase change process of PCM fluid. Comparison of heat transfer characteristics of single phase fluid and PCM fluid are made for two pins geometries for three different Reynolds numbers. Circular pins were found to be more effective in terms of heat transfer by exhibiting higher Nusselt number. Circular pin microchannels were also found to have lower pressure drop compared to the square pin microchannels.