Share

Flow instability of evaporative microchannels.

Author(s) : LEE H. J., LIU D. Y., YAO S. C.

Type of article: Article

Summary

When boiling occurs in a microchannel, the growing bubbles could be confined. They expand both upstream and downstream and cause flow instability in the form of flow fluctuations. The instability occurs frequently when the Bond number of the fluid in the microchannel is less than unity. To reduce the flow instability, installation of an inlet orifice at the upstream or the micro-channel expanding at the downstream are found to be effective. A generalized instability model for microchannels was established, which includes the effects of both inlet orifice and channel expansion. Experiments of evaporating water in 48 parallel microchannels with 353 micrometer hydraulic diameter were conducted, and the generalized instability criterion was validated. [Reprinted with permission from Elsevier. Copyright, 2010].

Details


Links


See other articles in this issue (4)
See the source

Indexing