Molecular-to-Large-Scale Heat Transfer With Multiphase Interfaces: Current Status and New Directions

Abstract

The scientific understanding of multiphase interfaces and the associated convective mass, momentum, and heat transport across and along their boundaries, provide the fundamental underpinnings of the advancement of boiling heat transfer, two-phase flows, heat pipes, spray cooling, and droplet-film coating, among many other engineering applications. Numerous studies have tried to characterize the interfacial behavior and model their mechanistic influences either directly or implicitly via parametric experimental investigations and/or simulations. The goal of advancing our understanding as well as developing generalized, perhaps “universal,” and more accurate phenomenological or mechanistic correlations, for predicting mass, momentum, and heat transfer, continues to engage the worldwide research community. A collection of some such current investigations that are representative of both basic and applied issues in the field is presented in this special issue of the Journal of Heat Transfer.