Enhanced heat transfer in microgravity from asymmetric sawtooth microstructure with engineered cavities

Abstract

Nucleate pool boiling in microgravity is influenced by stagnant vapor bubble dynamics, leading to early dryout of the heated surface compared to terrestrial conditions. The Asymmetric Sawtooth and Cavity-Enhanced Nucleation-driven Transport (ASCENT) investigation studied an engineered microstructure in a nucleate pool boiling setup aboard the International Space Station (ISS) from November 2022-January 2023. The experiment was housed in the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) and used degassed FC-72 as the test liquid. The engineered microstructure consisted of repeating mm-sized 60°-30° sawtooth structures located within a hermetically sealed square ampoule as the test chamber. Experimental investigations were conducted to explore a range of input heat fluxes, ranging from 0.5 to 2.3 W/cm². The resulting vapor dynamics and heat transfer were compared against a flat baseline surface. Both surfaces contained 250 µm square cavities spaced 1-mm apart. The constrained dimensions of the square chamber severely influenced vapor bubble dynamics across the heated surface. The presence of a liquid layer beneath vapor slugs on the microstructure was observed, in contrast to the baseline surface, where no liquid layer was visually detected. The transient heat transfer coefficient from the microstructure was higher than the baseline surface as the vapor bubbles grew larger at constant heat flux due to liquid film access provided by the asymmetric ridges on the microstructure. A significant increase in the heat transfer coefficient was observed at 1.8 W/cm2, potentially due to vigorous nucleation in the observed liquid pockets along the microstructure, increasing the heat transfer coefficient from 2900 to 6200 W/m2K. Nucleation was observed at heat fluxes as low as 0.5 W/cm2 from the engineered cavities, and a quasi-steady heat transfer coefficient of 2200 W/m2K was obtained at 2.3 W/cm2 from the microstructure surface. The quasi-steady analysis also indicated that both surfaces performed similarly in microgravity and terrestrial gravity in the same experimental setup. The results demonstrate that the liquid film dynamics underneath vapor slugs influence heat transfer to a large extent in microgravity conditions.