Advances in Understanding of Pool Boiling Heat Transfer—From Earth on to Deep Space

Abstract

In this work, the effectiveness of the numerical simulations in advancing fundamental understanding of bubble dynamics and nucleate pool boiling heat transfer is discussed. The results of numerical simulations are validated with experiments on ground, in parabolic flights and on the International Space Station (ISS). As such validation is carried out when the level of gravity is varied over seven orders of magnitude. It is shown that reduced gravity stretches the length and time scales of the process and generally leads to degradation of rate of heat transfer associated with nucleate boiling.