Experimental Investigation of Critical Heat Flux in Microchannels for Flow-Field Probes

Critical heat flux (CHF) of water in circular stainless steel microchannels with inner diameters ranging from ∼127μm to ∼254 μm was investigated. Forty-five CHF data points were acquired over mass velocities ranging from 1,200 kg/m²s to 53,000 kg/m²s, heated lengths from 2 cm to 8 cm, and exit qualities from −0.2 to 0.15. Most of the exit qualities fell below 0.1. It was found that CHF conditions were more dependent on mass velocity and heated length than on exit thermal condition. The results were also compared to six CHF correlations, with a mean average error ranging from 22% to 261.8%. A new correlation was proposed to better predict the critical heat flux data under the thermal-hydraulic conditions studied in this investigation. In developing the correlation, 319 data points were added from two previous studies.