Phase change heat transfer has been a topic of significant scientific and technological interest as it can serve as an efficient cooling method for high heat flux applications. Nucleate boiling is one of the most effective heat transfer mode, which is governed by a complex process of bubble growth on, and departure from, heating surfaces. Textured surfaces and porous materials have been commonly used to enhance the surface area for heat transfer and the bubble nucleation kinetics. To more effectively utilize nucleate boiling in technological practice, it is essential to better understand the dynamics of bubble nucleation and departure on textured surfaces and porous materials. Such studies will provide multi-disciplinary training opportunities that merge thermal transport physics, nanoengineering, and materials science. The insights gained from such a study would enable advances in a wide range of technologies in which thermal management is critical, including high-power-density electronic devices, data servers, and electronic warfare.
The proposed study will seek to design hierarchically porous metallic constructs to engineer nucleate boiling heat transfer. To this end, this study will utilize a new class of three-dimensional (3D) hierarchically porous metallic structures using a recently developed soft matter templating method with independent control over two scales of pore sizes (from nano- to tens of micrometers). The materials system with well-defined porous structure will help to investigate how hierarchical pore distribution affects bubble size, frequency and nucleate boiling phenomena. Simultaneous parametric computational studies and preliminary results from boiling and wetting tests will help to advance fundamental understandings of thermal transport mechanism through porous media.
