A novel MEMS device has been developed to study some of the fundamental issues surrounding the physics of the nucleation process intrinsic to boiling heat transfer. The device generates bubbles from an artificially generated nucleation site centered within a radially distributed sensor array. The array is fabricated within a Silicon/Benzocyclobutene (BCB) composite wall, with the capability to measure surface temperature with an unprecedented radial resolution of 22-40 μm underneath and around the bubble. The temperature data enabled numerical calculation of the surface heat flux with the same spatial resolution as of the temperature data. The temperature of the sensors and the synchronized images of the bubbles were recorded with a sampling frequency of 8 kHz. The unique data determined in this study were used to address some of the unresolved issues regarding the boiling process including 1) dynamics of bubble growth and associated heat transfer processes and 2) the bubble's role in surface heat transfer during the boiling process.
Group Sparsity Based Target Localization for Distributed Sensor Array Networks