The effect of sliding bubbles on nucleate boiling of a subcooled liquid flowing in a narrow channel

An apparatus that produces flow and heat transfer in horizontal narrow channels was used to explore the physics of the onset of subcooled nucleate boiling for R-11 and Novec 649. The apparatus uses a downward-facing electrically-heated thin foil as a heater, with the outside of the heater coated with a liquid crystal to display full-field temperature distributions for the heater surface. Video recordings were made of the temperature fields for a given set of operating conditions, accompanied by video recordings of the boiling behavior of the fluids in the channel itself. These two recordings were superimposed spatially so that the influence of various bubble dynamics could be directly correlated to the temperature response of the heater.