Abstract
Despite its importance in many industries, several important aspects of the nucleate boiling phenomenon remain poorly understood due to its inherent complexity and due to the statistical nature of heterogeneous bubble nucleation. This lack of understanding prevents meaningful progress in the enhancement of boiling performance parameters such as the heat transfer coefficient and the critical heat flux. To enable parametric phenomenological boiling studies, we present a laser-based controlled bubble generation technique that can produce spatially and temporally controlled bubbles representative of bubbles in actual nucleate boiling. We propose several phenomenological studies in boiling that can be undertaken using this approach to promote a mechanistic understanding of and enhancement in the boiling performance parameters.
