Due to the complex nature of the subprocesses involved in nucleate boiling, it has not been possible to develop comprehensive models or correlations despite decades of accumulated data and analysis. Complications such as the presence of dissolved gas in the liquid further confound attempts at modeling nucleate boiling. Moreover, existing empirical correlations may not be suitable for new applications, especially with regards to varying gravity level. More recently, numerical simulations of the boiling process have proven to be capable of reliably predicting bubble dynamics and associated heat transfer by showing excellent agreement with experimental data. However, most simulations decouple the solid substrate by assuming constant wall temperature. In the present study complete numerical simulations of the boiling process are performed--including conjugate transient conduction in the solid substrate and the effects of dissolved gas in the liquid at different levels of gravity. Finite difference schemes are used to discretize the governing equations in the liquid, vapor, and solid phases. The interface between liquid and vapor phases is tracked by a level set method. An iterative procedure is used at the interface between the solid and fluid phases. Near the three-phase contact line, temperatures in the solid are observed to fluctuate significantly over short periods. The results show good agreement with the data available in the literature. The results also show that waiting and growth periods can be related directly to wall superheat. The functional relationship between waiting period and wall superheat is found to agree well with empirical correlations reported in the literature. For the case of a single bubble in subcooled nucleate boiling, the presence of dissolved gas in the liquid is found to cause noncondensables to accumulate at the top of the bubble where most condensation occurs. This results in reduced local saturation temperature and condensation rates. The numerical predictions show reasonable agreement with the results from experiments performed at microgravity. For nucleate boiling at microgravity the simulations predict a drastic change in vapor removal pattern when compared to Earth normal gravity. The predictions match well with experimental results. However, simulated heat transfer rates were significantly under-predicted.

In the present study, a numerical procedure coupling level set function with moving mesh method is established. Test problems have been chosen to validate this developed method. The numerical results show that the current adaptive method can achieve the equivalent accuracy to the methods based on more uniform grids do. The results from the above-mentioned numerical procedure coupling level set function with moving mesh method for comparing cases in the presence of noncondensables with ones in the absence of noncondensables show the evidence of effects of noncondensable air imposed on heat transfer and the induced flow pattern is presented as well.

Bubbly flows are essential in many industrial and environmental applications and several methodologies have been employed to investigate the complex phenomena involved. In the present book Direct Numerical Simulations of bubble swarms in channel flow configuration are reported and several cases are presented. The focus is on the mutual interaction between fluid turbulence and bubble dynamics and the impact on the heat transfer in the two-phase mixture. This analysis concerns flow visualizations and quantitative statistical data regarding the fluid as well as the bubbles which can now be used as reference data for model developing and validation.

This volume contains an archival record of the NATO Advanced Institute on Microscale Heat Transfer – Fundamental and Applications in Biological and Microelectromechanical Systems held in Çesme – Izmir, Turkey, July 18–30, 2004. The ASIs are intended to be high-level teaching activity in scientific and technical areas of current concern. In this volume, the reader may find interesting chapters and various Microscale Heat Transfer Fundamental and Applications. The growing use of electronics, in both military and civilian applications has led to the widespread recognition for need of thermal packaging and management. The use of higher densities and frequencies in microelectronic circuits for computers are increasing day by day. They require effective cooling due to heat generated that is to be dissipated from a relatively low surface area. Hence, the development of efficient cooling techniques for integrated circuit chips is one of the important contemporary applications of Microscale Heat Transfer which has received much attention for cooling of high power electronics and applications in biomechanical and aerospace industries. Microelectromechanical systems are subject of increasing active research in a widening field of discipline. These topics and others are the main themeof this Institute.

A series of experimental studies on bubble dynamical behaviors and heat transfer in pool boiling on thin wires in different gravity conditions have been performed in the past years, including experiments in long-term microgravity aboard the 22nd Chinese recoverable satellite RS-22, in short-term microgravity in the drop tower Beijing, and in normal gravity on the ground. Steady pool boiling of degassed R113 on thin platinum wires has been studied using a temperature-controlled heating method. A voltage-controlled heating method has also been used in normal gravity. A slight enhancement of nucleate boiling heat transfer is observed in microgravity, while dramatic changes of bubble behaviors are very evident. Considering the influence of the Marangoni effects, the different characteristics of bubble behaviors in microgravity have been explained. A new bubble departure model including the influence of the Marangoni effects has also been proposed, which can predict the whole observation both in microgravity and in normal gravity. The value of CHF (critical heat flux) in microgravity is lower than that in normal gravity, but it can be predicted well by the Lienhard-Dhir correlation, although the dimensionless radius, or the square root of the Bond number, in the present case is far beyond its initial application range. A further revisit on the scaling of CHF with heater radius in normal gravity, which is focused on the case of a small Bond number, has also been performed in our laboratory using different kinds of working fluids at different subcooling conditions. Interactions between the influences of the subcooling and heater radius will be important for the case of a small Bond number. In addition to the Bond number, there may exist some other parameters, which may be material-dependent, that play important roles in the CHF phenomenon with a small Bond number.