Features of boiling on an artificial surface — Bubble formation, wall temperature fluctuation and nucleation site interaction

Abstract

The artificial surfaces are applied to study the pool boiling features, including the bubble behaviors, the surface temperature fluctuation, the heat transfer characteristics and nucleate site interaction. Three sets of experiments are carried out to investigate the influences of cavity shape, cavity size, cavity spacing on the boiling phenomena. Experimental results reveal that bubbling from the cylindrical as well as reentrant cavity is generally stable. The influence of cavity diameter on the bubble behaviors and the temperature fluctuation seems very weak while the effect of cavity depth cannot be neglected. As for the two cavity conditions, the bubble behaviors show the different features depending on the dimensionless cavity spacing. Three significant factors (thermal interaction, hydraulic interaction, bubble coalescence) control the nucleation site interaction, and the competition and dominance of the factors yield four interaction regimes.