Nucleation and Growth Dynamics of Bubbles formed by Pulse-heating a Microscale Surface in a Sub-cooled Liquid under Partial Vacuum

Published

December 1, 2011

Author(s)

Richard E. Cavicchi, Charles T. Avedisian

Abstract

The influence of ambient pressure below atmospheric and heating rate on bubble dynamics associated with rapid evaporation in highly superheated water is investigated in this work. The average surface temperature of thin platinum strips immersed in water is shown to oscillate with a frequency on the order of 0.5 MHz. The oscillation frequency increases with ambient pressure in the range 0.002MPa and 0.101MPa. High speed imaging was used to show that the growth phase was associated with surface heating and the collapse phase with cooling in the cyclic temperature history. The nucleation temperature was unaffected by pressure in the sub-atmospheric range examined while it approached the theoretical limit for water at 109°C/s.

Citation

Journal of Heat Transfer-Transactions of the ASME

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1016/J.Ijheatmasstransfer.2011.07.006

Keywords

bubble, homogeneous nucleation, microheater, nucleation, vacuum

Citation

Cavicchi, R. and Avedisian, C. (2011), Nucleation and Growth Dynamics of Bubbles formed by Pulse-heating a Microscale Surface in a Sub-cooled Liquid under Partial Vacuum, Journal of Heat Transfer-Transactions of the ASME, [online], https://doi.org/10.1016/J.Ijheatmasstransfer.2011.07.006 (Accessed October 9, 2025)