Approach to Heat Transfer Mechanism Beneath Boiling Bubble With MEMS Sensor

Temperature variation beneath isolated bubble during saturated boiling of water was measured with a MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) sensor having high temporal and spatial resolution. Then, local heat transfer from the heated surface was evaluated by a transient heat conduction analysis of the wall with measured temperature data as a boundary condition. The MEMS sensor on a 20 × 20 mm² silicon substrate includes an electrolysis trigger and eight thin film thermocouples on the top side, and two thin film heaters on the back side. The thin film thermocouple was calibrated with a thermal scan method using two alloy samples with different melting point. The condition of the sensor was smoothly controlled with the heater. The bubble is initiated with electrolysis at a gap of the trigger electrode, where slight hydrogen gasses are supplied as bubble nuclei. Then, local and fast temperature variations in wide region are measured with the thermocouples with cutoff frequency of 100 kHz arranged in a line at 40 – 2000 μm far from the trigger gap. Measured temperature data presents formation of microlayer and expansion of dryout area in bubble growth process and rewetting in bubble departure process. The numerical analysis showed that average heat flux beneath the bubble indicated the maximum value of 19 W/cm² during the microlayer evaporation, and then after hitting a bottom slightly lower than a heat flux at the bubble nucleation, recovers to the nucleation level. The contribution of the heat transfer from the heated wall was evaluated to approximately one-fourth of latent heat in the bubble at departure.