Explosive boiling of liquid argon films on flat and nanostructured surfaces

Abstract

Because of the effects of the nanostructure, phase change behaviors on flat and nanostructured surfaces display distinct features. In this work, the molecular dynamics simulation method is employed to investigate the onset temperature of explosive boiling (Ts) with various film thicknesses, pillar heights, and wettability. The simulation results show that Ts decreases with the film thickness on both wettability flat surfaces. However, the decreasing rates have the significant distinctions, where the difference between two surfaces of Ts with the identical film thickness decreases. In addition, the simulation results demonstrate that all the values of Ts on nanostructured surfaces are lower than those on flat surfaces with the same film thickness. With the increase of the film thickness, Ts presents a decreasing trend on both wettability and nanostructured surfaces, especially with the liquid film with the thickness over 6 nm, where a completely opposite conclusion compared to the flat surface is represented.