Nucleate boiling heat transfer and critical heat flux in controllable droplet trains cooling

As electronic devices continue to shrink in size while demanding higher cooling performance, the need for miniaturized, controllable high-heat-flux cooling technologies has become increasingly urgent. This study proposes a novel controllable high-heat-flux droplet train cooling technology, utilizing a custom-designed droplet generator to achieve droplet fluxes (N) exceeding 2,000,000 1/cm2s over a 1 cm2 cooling area. Nucleate boiling heat transfer and critical heat flux (CHF) in controllable droplet trains cooling are experimentally investigated with varied ratios of droplet train spacing to droplet diameter S/D0, volumetric flow rates and subcooling degrees. The maximum Critical Heat Flux (CHF) is up to 1037 W/cm2 at the volumetric flow rate of 6.83 cm3/s. Based on experimental results, the heat flux correlations of nucleate boiling and CHF are proposed, with the dimensionless critical heat flux correlation indicating that logCHF*proportional to- (S/D0). The development of controllable droplet train cooling technology presents promising opportunities for enhancing high-heat-flux thermal management in compact electronic systems.