Dynamics of Pool Boiling on Plain and Nanotube Coated Silicon Surfaces

Saturated pool boiling experiments are conducted over silicon substrates with and without Multi-walled Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNT) with PF-5060 as the test fluid. Micro-fabricated thin film thermocouples located on the substrate acquire surface temperature fluctuation data at 1 kHz frequency. The high frequency surface temperature data is analyzed for the presence of chaotic dynamics. The shareware code, TISEAN^© is used in analysis of the temperature time-series. Results show the presence of low-dimensional deterministic chaos, near Critical Heat Flux (CHF) and in some parts of the Fully Developed Nucleate Boiling (FDNB) regime. Some evidence of chaotic dynamics is also obtained for the film boiling regimes. Singular value decomposition is employed to generate pseudo-phase plots of the attractor. In contrast to previous studies involving multiple nucleation sites, the pseudo-phase plots show the presence of multi-fractal structure at high heat fluxes and in the film boiling regime. An estimate of invariant quantities such as correlation dimensions and Lyapunov exponents reveals the change in attractor geometry with heat flux levels. No significant impact of surface texturing is visible in terms of the invariant quantities.