Effect of Vapor Bubble Size on Heat Transfer in Spray Cooling

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Panneer Selvam
Keyword(s):  
Heat Transfer ◽  
Bubble Size ◽  
Vapor Bubble ◽  
Spray Cooling

Direct Numerical Simulation of Heat Transfer in Spray Cooling Through 3D Multiphase Flow Modeling Using Parallel Computing

2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Suranjan Sarkar ◽  
R. Panneer Selvam
Keyword(s):  
Heat Transfer ◽  
Heat Flux ◽  
Parallel Computing ◽  
Phase Change ◽  
Power Electronics ◽  
Vapor Bubble ◽  
Heat Removal ◽  
Spray Cooling ◽  
Hot Surface ◽  
Liquid Vapor

Thermal management issues have become a major bottleneck for further miniaturization and increased power consumption of electronics. Power electronics require more increasing use of high heat flux cooling technologies. Spray cooling with phase change has the advantage of large amount of heat transfer from the hot surface of many power electronics. Spray cooling is a complex phenomenon due to the interaction of liquid, vapor, and phase change at small length scale. A good understanding of the underlying physics and the heat removal process in spray cooling through numerical modeling is needed to design efficient spray cooling system. A computational fluid dynamics based 3D multiphase model for spray cooling is developed here in parallel computing environment using multigrid conjugate gradient solver. This model considers the effect of surface tension, gravity, phase change, and viscosity. The level set method is used to capture the movement of the liquid-vapor interface. The governing equations are solved using finite difference method. Spray cooling is studied using this model, where a vapor bubble is growing in a thin liquid film on a hot surface and a droplet is impacting on the thin film. The symmetry boundary condition considered on four sides of the domain effectively represents a large spray made up of multiple equally sized droplets and bubbles and their interaction. Studies have also been performed for different wall superheats in the absence of vapor bubble to compare the effect of two-phase heat transfer compared to single-phase in spray cooling. The computed interface, temperature, and heat flux distributions at different times over the domain are visualized for better understanding of the heat removal mechanism.

Computer Modeling of Liquid Droplet Impact on Heat Transfer During Spray Cooling

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Panneer Selvam ◽  
Sandya Bhaskara ◽  
Juan C. Balda ◽  
Fred Barlow ◽  
Aicha Elshabini
Keyword(s):  
Heat Transfer ◽  
Liquid Film ◽  
Vapor Bubble ◽  
Liquid Droplet ◽  
Heat Removal ◽  
Spray Cooling ◽  
Droplet Impact ◽  
System Level ◽  
High Heat Flux ◽  
Micro Level

Spray cooling is a high flux heat removal technique considered for systems dissipating high power within small areas such as advanced lasers. Recently Selvam and Ponnappan (2004 & 2005) identified the importance of modeling heat transfer in a thin liquid film on a hot surface at the micro level and illustrated how this micro level modeling could help to improve the macro level spray cooling. The goal of this research is to advance the theoretical understanding of spray cooling to enable efficient system level hardware designs. Two-phase flow modeling is done using the level set method to identify the interface of vapor and liquid. The modifications made to the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations to consider surface tension and phase change are presented. The equations are solved using the finite difference method. The effect of liquid droplet impact on a 40 μm thick liquid film containing vapor bubble and the consequent heat removal is explained with a sequence of temperature vs. time contours. From that, the importance of fast transient conduction in the liquid film leading to high heat flux in a short time is illustrated. The optimum positioning of the droplet with respect to the vapor bubble for effective heat removal is also systematically investigated. This information is expected to help in proper positioning of the droplet in three-dimensional modeling.

Numerical Simulation of Heat Transfer Mechanisms in Spray Cooling

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eelco Gehring ◽  
Mario F. Trujillo
Keyword(s):  
Heat Transfer ◽  
Heated Surface ◽  
Spray Cooling ◽  
Impingement Zone ◽  
Ongoing Work ◽  
Efficient Suppression ◽  
A Cell ◽  
Cooling Behavior ◽  
Free Surface Capturing ◽  
The Impact

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.

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