Nucleate Pool Boiling Heat Transfer on a Micro-Pin-Finned Surface in Short-Term Microgravity

Nucleate boiling heat transfer of air-dissolved FC-72 on a micro-pin-finned surface was experimentally investigated in microgravity by utilizing the drop tower facility in Beijing. The dimensions of the silicon chips were 10 mm × 10 mm × 0.5 mm and on these, two kinds of micro-pin-fins with the dimensions of 30 × 30 × 60 μm³ and 50 × 50 × 120 μm³ (width × thickness × height, named PF30-60 and PF50-120) were fabricated by the dry etching technique. Nucleate pool boiling on a smooth surface was also studied under both Earth gravity and microgravity for comparison. In general, the micro-pin-fins showed better heat transfer performance when compared with a smooth surface, both under Earth gravity and microgravity. In microgravity, this is mainly due to the fact that bubbles generated on micro-pin-finned surface can depart from the heater surface continuously. For micro-pin-fins, the reduced-gravity critical heat flux was about two-thirds of that in the Earth gravity experiment, but almost three times as large as that for the smooth surface, which is larger than that in the terrestrial experiment. Under different gravity levels, PF50-120 shows a little better heat transfer than that of PF30-60, mainly due to larger heat transfer area. Besides, the fin gap of PF30-60 may generate a larger flow resistance for microconvection around the fin side walls, resulting in a lower heat transfer performance.