Molecular dynamics simulation of argon pool boiling: A comparative study of employing nanoparticles and creating tree-root type nanostructures

Abstract

This paper is aimed to investigate the effectiveness of innovative nanostructured surfaces in terms of heat transfer and evaporation rate enhancement during the pool boiling process of argon atoms by employing molecular dynamics simulation. LAMMPS software and Lennard-Jones potential are used for the simulation and determination of the force field. The fundamental thought of creating these novel geometries (tree-root type nanostructures) is to use the branches as a barrier against liquid cluster separation, which leads to fluid temperature enhancement. First, the framework of simulation is validated, and then the results of creating two types of copper tree-root nanostructures are presented and compared with three cases which include: adding platinum, aluminum, and copper nanoparticles to the argon fluid on the plain copper substrate. The results revealed that creating tree-root type nanostructures postponed the separation of the liquid cluster in comparison with adding nanoparticles. In addition, the tree-root type nanostructures can enhance the evaporation rate and the argon temperature up to 60.05% and 17.13% more than adding nanoparticles, respectively. On the other hand, these nanostructures improve the maximum heat flux and corresponding convective heat transfer coefficient by 15.46% and 26.86% compared to the cases of adding nanoparticles, respectively.