Xiao-Long Ouyang

Numerical Investigation of the Flow Dynamics and Evaporative Cooling of Water Droplets Impinging onto Heated Surfaces: An Effective Approach To Identify Spray Cooling Mechanisms

Numerical investigations of the dynamics and evaporative cooling of water droplets impinging onto heated surfaces can be used to identify spray cooling mechanisms. Droplet impingement dynamics and evaporation are simulated using the presented numerical model. Volume-of-fluid method is used in the model to track the free surface. The contact line dynamics was predicted from a dynamic contact angle model with the evaporation rate predicted by a kinetic theory model. A species transport equation was solved in the gas phase to describe the vapor convection and diffusion. The numerical model was validated by experimental data. The physical effects including the contact angle hysteresis and the thermocapillary effect are analyzed to offer guidance for future numerical models of droplet impingement cooling. The effects of various parameters including surface wettability, surface temperature, droplet velocity, droplet size, and droplet temperature were numerically studied from the standpoint of spray cooling. The numerical simulations offer profound analysis and deep insight into the spray cooling heat transfer mechanisms.

Water Droplet Spreading and Wicking on Nanostructured Surfaces

Phase-change heat transfer on nanostructured surfaces is an efficient cooling method for high heat flux devices due to its superior wettability. Liquid droplet spreading and wicking effect then dominate the heat transfer. Therefore, this study investigates the flow behavior after a droplet touches a nanostructured surface focusing on the ZnO nanowire surface with three different nanowire sizes and two array types (regular and irregular). The spreading diameter and the wicking diameter are measured against time. The results show that the average spreading and wicking velocities on a regular nanostructured surface are both smaller than those on an irregular nanostructured surface and that the nanowire size affects the liquid spreading and capillary wicking.

Dropwise Evaporative Cooling of Heated Surfaces with Various Wettability Characteristics Obtained by Nanostructure Modifications

A numerical and experimental investigation was conducted to analyze dropwise evaporative cooling of heated surfaces with various wettability characteristics. The surface wettability was tuned by nanostructure modifications. Spray-cooling experiments on these surfaces show that surfaces with better wettability have better heat transfer rate and higher critical heat flux (CHF). Single droplet impingement evaporative cooling of a heated surface was then investigated numerically with various wettability conditions to characterize the effect of contact angle on spray-cooling heat transfer. The volume of fluid (VOF) model with variable-time stepping was used to capture the time-dependent liquid-gas interface motion throughout the computational domain with the kinetic theory model used to predict the evaporation rate at the liquid-gas interface. The numerical results agree with the spray-cooling experiments that dropwise evaporative cooling is much better on surfaces with better wettability because of the better liquid spreading and convection, better liquid-solid contact, and stronger liquid evaporation.

Experimental Investigation of Spray Cooling on Nano- and Hybrid-Structured Surfaces

The heat transfer during spray cooling was studied experimentally using deionized water to investigate the spray characteristics and the differences between spray cooling on a smooth silicon surface and nano- and hybrid micro/nano-structured surfaces. The spray cooling experiments show that the heat transfer rates were best for the nano-structured surface, followed by the smooth surface coated with the SiO2 film and the pure silicon surface since the contact angle was smallest on the nano-structured surface and increased on the other two surfaces. The Critical Heat Flux (CHF) was largest for the 25G×25S surface coated with four Carbon Nano Tube (CNT) films with a 75.3% increase over the smooth surface.Copyright

General slip regime permeability model for gas flow through porous media

A theoretical effective gas permeability model was developed for rarefied gas flow in porous media, which holds over the entire slip regime with the permeability derived as a function of the Knudsen number. This general slip regime model (GSR model) is derived from the pore-scale Navier-Stokes equations subject to the first-order wall slip boundary condition using the volume-averaging method. The local closure problem for the volume-averaged equations is studied analytically and numerically using a periodic sphere array geometry. The GSR model includes a rational fraction function of the Knudsen number which leads to a limit effective permeability as the Knudsen number increases. The mechanism for this behavior is the viscous fluid inner friction caused by converging-diverging flow channels in porous media. A linearization of the GSR model leads to the Klinkenberg equation for slightly rarefied gas flows. Finite element simulations show that the Klinkenberg model overestimates the effective permeability by as much as 33% when a flow approaches the transition regime. The GSR model reduces to the unified permeability model [F. Civan, “Effective correlation of apparent gas permeability in tight porous media,” Transp. Porous Media 82, 375 (2010)] for the flow in the slip regime and clarifies the physical significance of the empirical parameter b in the unified model.