Drop impact in spray cooling

• Main Author: Gao, Xuan
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2017
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/63356

Spray cooling has enormous potential in addressing high-heat-flux thermal challenges in many cutting-edge technologies. In spray cooling, a flow of coolant drops is emitted from a spray nozzle and impacts a hot surface, which is covered by a flowing film. Heat transfers by convection from the surface to the liquid coolant, and the cooling performance is determined by the fluid dynamics of spray drops impacting the liquid film. The cooling mechanisms involved in spray cooling are still not clear, due to the lack of understanding of the heat transfer and fluid dynamics involved in the drop impact in spray cooling. The research work puts focus on the drop impact in spray cooling, which is carried out in four major steps. The first step is to study spray impact cooling experimentally with focus on the cooling effects of nozzle positioning parameters including spray height and inclination angle. The positioning parameters are shown to have effects on global and local cooling as the drop impact is affected when changing the spray positioning. The second step is to experimentally and theoretically investigate the fluid dynamics of a single liquid drop impacting a flowing film. The third step is to evaluate heat transfer enhancement during a single drop impact. The work carried out in the second and third steps forms a comprehensive study on the thermal-fluidics of single drop impact on a flowing film. The fourth step moves on to the heat transfer enhancement of drop train impacting flowing films. A drop train is formed when drops are generated in groups, and each group has a consistent number of drops. A drop generator is combined with a special setup to generate drop trains with varied impact frequencies including group frequency (the generation rate of groups) and single frequency (the generation rate of single drops in each group). The results relate the cooling enhancement of continuous drop impact to important impact parameters including drop number, velocity, and impact frequencies. === Applied Science, Faculty of === Engineering, School of (Okanagan) === Graduate