Experimental design for study of nucleate boiling in porous structures

The superheat required to initiate nucleate boiling inside porous wicks is not well understood in practice. This thesis reports the design of an experimental setup for investigating the onset of vapor nucleation in sintered porous structures. Pressure sensing was evaluated as an effective means of detecting the onset of nucleation. Thermal studies were conducted with a custom finite difference script in conjunction with finite element analysis. Heat conduction through a three dimensional wick was reduced to one dimensional conduction via symmetry and design constraints. The wick was optimized to achieve a temperature drop of 30 *C at a common heat pipe operating temperature of 70 °C.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Kelley, Mitchell Joseph

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Evelyn N. Wang.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/68530

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/68530