In the present work, we examine to what degree the heat transfer can be described as developed on a macro-scale level in typical micro- and mini-channels with offset strip fin arrays subject to a uniform heat flux, considering flow entrance and side-wall effects. Full-scale numerical heat transfer simulations are conducted to determine the extent of the developed macro-scale heat transfer region within the arrays. We find that the onset point of developed heat transfer increases linearly with the Péclet number and channel width. However, the thermal development lengths remain limited relative to the overall channel length. Therefore, the local macro-scale heat transfer coefficient can be modeled by developed Nusselt number correlations with discrepancies below 25% in both the developed and developing heat transfer regions. We observe that quasi-developed heat transfer prevails over nearly the entire entrance region of the channel and significantly contributes to the main heat transfer characteristics, particularly the eigenvalues and amplitudes of the dominant temperature modes. Additionally, we analyze the impact of channel side walls on the temperature field's periodicity and the
Vertical forcing of partially filled tanks can induce parametric sloshing. Under non-isothermal conditions, the resulting mixing can disrupt the thermal stratification between liquid and vapor, leading to enhanced heat and mass transfer and large pressure fluctuations. This work presents an experimental investigation of sloshing-induced heat and mass transfer in a horizontally oriented cylindrical tank under vertical harmonic excitation. This configuration is particularly relevant for cryogenic fuel storage in aircraft and ground transportation, yet its thermodynamic response under parametric sloshing remains largely uncharacterized. The present study provides the first experimental characterization of the sloshing-induced pressure drop and associated heat and mass transfer in this geometry. Decoupled isothermal and non-isothermal experimental campaigns are carried out across multiple fill levels and forcing amplitudes, near resonance of the first longitudinal symmetric mode $(2,0)$, using a hydrofluoroether fluid (3M Novec HFE-7000). To quantify heat and mass transfer, a lumped thermodynamic model is combined with an Augmented-state Extended Kalman Filter (AEKF), enabling real-tim
Critical heat flux is a key quantity in boiling system modeling due to its impact on heat transfer and component temperature and performance. This study investigates the development and validation of an uncertainty-aware hybrid modeling approach that combines machine learning with physics-based models in the prediction of critical heat flux in nuclear reactors for cases of dryout. Two empirical correlations, Biasi and Bowring, were employed with three machine learning uncertainty quantification techniques: deep neural network ensembles, Bayesian neural networks, and deep Gaussian processes. A pure machine learning model without a base model served as a baseline for comparison. This study examines the performance and uncertainty of the models under both plentiful and limited training data scenarios using parity plots, uncertainty distributions, and calibration curves. The results indicate that the Biasi hybrid deep neural network ensemble achieved the most favorable performance (with a mean absolute relative error of 1.846% and stable uncertainty estimates), particularly in the plentiful data scenario. The Bayesian neural network models showed slightly higher error and uncertainty b
There are some misnomers and misconceptions about what is heat and what is work; the recognition of heat and work is even more difficult when it comes to categorize energy as heat or work. Since both heat and work are energy the name-confusion does not make much difference from engineering point of view, but re-defining `heat' and `work' in the right-perspective of second-law-of-thermodynamics \cite {ref1} is necessary to revise our understanding at fundamental level. It is concluded that `heat is the energy carried by mass-less \textit{photons} whereas work is energy carried by mass-ive material \textit{fermions}'. Revised understanding of heat and work in this way has far reaching consequences in Physics [2-4]. The present paper lays emphasis on re-defining heat and work, removing the prevailing misconception, talks about single photon interaction and heat property of photon. Also, interestingly, it is noted that different fields of study such as `Thermodynamics' and `Relativity' are interlinked.
Many microbes live in habitats below their optimum temperature. Retention of metabolic heat by aggregation or insulation would boost growth. Generation of excess metabolic heat may also provide benefit. A cell that makes excess metabolic heat pays the cost of production, whereas the benefit may be shared by neighbors within a zone of local heat capture. Metabolic heat as a shareable public good raises interesting questions about conflict and cooperation of heat production and capture. Metabolic heat may also be deployed as a weapon. Species with greater thermotolerance gain by raising local temperature to outcompete less thermotolerant taxa. Metabolic heat may provide defense against bacteriophage attack, by analogy with fever in vertebrates. This article outlines the theory of metabolic heat in microbial conflict and cooperation, presenting several predictions for future study.
The study of heat transport in low-dimensional oscillator lattices presents a formidable challenge. Theoretical efforts have been made trying to reveal the underlying mechanism of diversified heat transport behaviors. In lack of a unified rigorous treatment, approximate theories often may embody controversial predictions. It is therefore of ultimate importance that one can rely on numerical simulations in the investigation of heat transfer processes in low-dimensional lattices. The simulation of heat transport using the non-equilibrium heat bath method and the Green-Kubo method will be introduced. It is found that one-dimensional (1D), two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) momentum-conserving nonlinear lattices display power-law divergent, logarithmic divergent and constant thermal conductivities, respectively. Next, a novel diffusion method is also introduced. The heat diffusion theory connects the energy diffusion and heat conduction in a straightforward manner. This enables one to use the diffusion method to investigate the objective of heat transport. In addition, it contains fundamental information about the heat transport process which cannot readily be gathered oth
A shell and tube heat exchanger design with respect to the total heat transfer rate and temperature profile has been invstigated by numerical modelling. The HE comprises of a single tube and has been resolved by the two equation models namely, the k epsilon and k omega. The low RMS residual levels calculated showed that the convergence is better in the k omega. The differences in the heat transfer rates noted are likely due to the low number of iterations on the flow and heat transfer helps explain the selection of an appropriate model i.e. k omega.
In this paper, we present a theoretical study aimed at investigating the rate-limiting factors in thin-film evaporative heat transfer processes, considering the finite-rate evaporation kinetics. The problems of evaporation of a flat thin-film in either pure vapours or vapour-inert-gas mixtures are analysed based on the non-dimensionalised macroscopic transport equations for continuum fluids, coupled with out-of-equilibrium kinetic boundary conditions. Both the full numerical solutions and asymptotic analytical solutions at slow evaporation limit are provided and applied to analyse thin water film evaporation. Existing solutions, assuming negligible heat transfer in the gas domain, or negligible temperature jump across the non-equilibrium kinetic layer, or more boldly a thermodynamically equilibrial interface (i.e. its temperature is at the saturation temperature), can be fully recovered from the more general solutions presented here. Our results show that while these assumptions hold in special cases, they can lead to significant errors in many conditions, especially when the film thickness $δ$ is reduced to a few micrometers or thinner. We show that the conventional views that the
The building sector is responsible for 40% of primary energy consumption, with heating/cooling covering the most significant portion. Thus, passive heating/cooling applications have gained significant ground during the last three decades, with many research activities on the subject. Among passive cooling/heating applications, ground cooling (especially earth-to-air heat exchangers) has been highlighted as a remarkably attractive technological research subjects because of its significant contribution to the reduction of heating/cooling energy loads; the improvement of indoor thermal comfort conditions; and the amelioration of the urban environment. This paper presents a holistic review of state-of-the-art research, methodologies, and technologies of earth-to-air heat exchangers that help achieve energy conservation and thermal comfort in the built environment. The review covers the critical subject of the thermal performance of earth-to-air heat exchanger systems; experimental studies and applications; parametric studies for investigating the impact of their main characteristics on thermal efficiency; and recent advances and trends including hybrid technologies and systems. The mod
The accurate prediction of the two-phase heat transfer coefficient (HTC) as a function of working fluids, channel geometries and process conditions is key to the optimal design and operation of compact heat exchangers. Advances in artificial intelligence research have recently boosted the application of machine learning (ML) algorithms to obtain data-driven surrogate models for the HTC. For most supervised learning algorithms, the task is that of a nonlinear regression problem. Despite the fact that these models have been proven capable of outperforming traditional empirical correlations, they have key limitations such as overfitting the data, the lack of uncertainty estimation, and interpretability of the results. To address these limitations, in this paper, we use a multi-output Gaussian process regression (GPR) to estimate the HTC in microchannels as a function of the mass flow rate, heat flux, system pressure and channel diameter and length. The model is trained using the Brunel Two-Phase Flow database of high-fidelity experimental data. The advantages of GPR are data efficiency, the small number of hyperparameters to be trained (typically of the same order of the number of inp
The present study proposes a new efficient and robust algorithm for multi-objectives topology optimization of heat transfer surfaces to achieve heat transfer enhancement with a less pressure drop penalty based on a continuous adjoint approach. It is achieved with a customized OpenFOAM solver, which is based on a volume penalization method for solving a steady and laminar flow around iso-thermal solid objects with arbitrary geometries. The fluid-solid interface is captured by a level-set function combined with a newly proposed robust reinitialization scheme ensuring that the interface diffusion is always kept within a single local grid spacing. Adaptive mesh refinement is applied in near-wall regions automatically detected by the level-set function to keep high resolution locally, thereby reduces the overall computational cost for the forward and adjoint analyses. The developed solver is first validated in a drag reduction problem of a flow around a two-dimensional cylinder at the Reynolds numbers of 10 and 40 by comparing reference data. Then, the proposed scheme is extended to heat transfer problems in a two-dimensional flow at the Prandtl number of 0.7 and 6.9. Finally, three-dim
In this work, the Nusselt number is examined for periodically developed heat transfer in micro- and mini-channels with arrays of offset strip fins, subject to a constant heat flux. The Nusselt number is defined on the basis of a heat transfer coefficient which represents the spatially constant macro-scale temperature difference between the fluid and solid during conjugate heat transfer. Its values are determined numerically on a single unit cell of the array for Reynolds numbers between 1 and 600. Two combinations of the Prandtl number and the thermal conductivity ratio are selected, corresponding to air and water. It is shown that the Nusselt number correlations from the literature mainly apply to air in the transitional flow regime in larger conventional channels if the wall temperature remains uniform. As a result, they do not correctly capture the observed trends for the Nusselt number in micro- and mini-channels subject to a constant heat flux. Therefore, new Nusselt number correlations, obtained through a least-squares fitting of 2282 numerical simulations, are presented for air and water. The suitability of these correlations is assessed via the Bayesian approach for paramet
We derive a nice representation for point symmetry transformations of the (1+1)-dimensional linear heat equation and properly interpret them. This allows us to prove that the pseudogroup of these transformations has exactly two connected components. That is, the heat equation admits a single independent discrete symmetry, which can be chosen to be alternating the sign of the dependent variable. We introduce the notion of pseudo-discrete elements of a Lie group and show that alternating the sign of the space variable, which was for a long time misinterpreted as a discrete symmetry of the heat equation, is in fact a pseudo-discrete element of its essential point symmetry group. The classification of subalgebras of the essential Lie invariance algebra of the heat equation is enhanced and the description of generalized symmetries of this equation is refined as well. We also consider the Burgers equation because of its relation to the heat equation and prove that it admits no discrete point symmetries. The developed approach to point-symmetry groups whose elements have components that are linear fractional in some variables can directly be extended to many other linear and nonlinear dif
With the increasing power density of electronics components, the heat dissipation capacity of heat sinks gradually becomes a bottleneck. Many structural optimization methods, including topology optimization, have been widely used for heat sinks. Due to its high design freedom, topology optimization is suggested for the design of heat sinks using a transient pseudo-3D thermofluid model to acquire better instantaneous thermal performance. The pseudo-3D model is designed to reduce the computational cost and maintain an acceptable accuracy. The model relies on an artificial heat convection coefficient to couple two layers and establish the approximate relationship with the corresponding 3D model. In the model, a constant pressure drop and heat generation rate are treated. The material distribution is optimized to reduce the average temperature of the base plate at the prescribed terminal time. Furthermore, to reduce the intermediate density regions during the density-based topology optimization procedure, a detailed analysis of interpolation functions is made and the penalty factors are chosen on this basis. Finally, considering the engineering application of the model, a practical mod
We identify conditions for the presence of negative specific heat in non-relativistic self-gravitating systems and similar systems of attracting particles. The method used, is to analyse the Virial theorem and two soluble models of systems of attracting particles, and to map the sign of the specific heat for different combinations of the number of spatial dimensions of the system, $D$($\geq 2$), and the exponent, $ν$($ eq 0$), in the force potential, $φ=Cr^ν$. Negative specific heat in such systems is found to be present exactly for $ν=-1$, at least for $D \geq 3$. For many combinations of $D$ and $ν$ representing long-range forces, the specific heat is positive or zero, for both models and the Virial theorem. Hence negative specific heat is not caused by long-range forces as such. We also find that negative specific heat appears when $ν$ is negative, and there is no singular point in a certain density distribution. A possible mechanism behind this is suggested.
The flow field and the heat transfer around six in-line iso-thermal circular cylinders has been studied by mean of numerical simulations. Two values of the center to center spacing ($s=3.6d$ and $4d$, where $d$ is the cylinder diameter) at Reynolds number of $100$ and Prandtl number of $0.7$ has been investigated. Similarly to the in-line two cylinder configuration, in this range a transition in the flow and in the heat transfer occurs. Two different flow patterns have been identified: the stable shear layer (SSL) mode and the shear layer secondary vortices (SLSV) mode, at $3.6$ and $4$ spacing ratio ($s/d$), respectively. At $s/d=3.6$ the flow pattern causes the entrainment of cold fluid on the downstream cylinders enhancing the heat transfer. On the other hand at $s/d=4$ two stable opposite shear layer prevent the cold fluid entrainment over the downstream cylinders reducing their heat exchange. The overall time average heat transfer of the array is enhanced up to 25% decreasing the spacing ratio from $4$ to $3.6$. Furthermore, it is found that the increased heat transfer is related to the phase shift between the Nusselt time series of successive cylinders.
Light absorption in conducting materials produces heating of their conduction electrons, followed by relaxation into phonons within picoseconds, and subsequent diffusion into the surrounding media over longer timescales. This conventional picture of optical heating is supplemented by radiative cooling, which typically takes place at an even lower pace, only becoming relevant for structures held in vacuum or under extreme conditions of thermal isolation. Here we reveal an ultrafast radiative cooling regime between neighboring plasmon-supporting graphene nanostructures in which noncontact heat transfer becomes a dominant channel. We predict that >50% of the electronic heat energy deposited on a graphene disk can be transferred to a neighboring nanoisland within a femtosecond timescale. This phenomenon is facilitated by the combination of low electronic heat capacity and large plasmonic field concentration displayed by doped graphene. Similar effects should take place in other van der Waals materials, thus opening an unexplored avenue toward efficient heat management in ultrathin nanostructures.
This paper numerically investigates the physical mechanism of flow instability and heat transfer of natural convection in a cavity with thin fin(s). The left and the right walls of the cavity are differentially heated. The cavity is given an initial temperature, and the thin fin(s) is fixed on the hot wall in order to control the heat transfer. The finite volume method and the SIMPLE algorithm are used to simulate the flow. Distributions of the temperature, the pressure, the velocity and the total pressure are obtained. Then, the energy gradient theory is employed to study the physical mechanism of flow instability and the effect of the thin fin(s) on heat transfer. Based on the energy gradient theory, the energy gradient function K represents the characteristic of flow instability. It is observed from the simulation results that the positions where instabilities take place in the temperature contours accord well with those of higher K value, which demonstrates that the energy gradient theory reveals the physical mechanism of flow instability. Furthermore, the effects of the fin length, the fin position, the fin number, and Ra on heat transfer are investigated. It is found that the
We report a 2D modeling of the thermal diffusion-controlled growth of a vapor bubble attached to a heating surface during saturated boiling. The heat conduction problem is solved in a liquid that surrounds a bubble with a free boundary and in a semi-infinite solid heater by the boundary element method. At high system pressure the bubble is assumed to grow slowly, its shape being defined by the surface tension and the vapor recoil force, a force coming from the liquid evaporating into the bubble. It is shown that at some typical time the dry spot under the bubble begins to grow rapidly under the action of the vapor recoil. Such a bubble can eventually spread into a vapor film that can separate the liquid from the heater thus triggering the boiling crisis (critical heat flux).
With recent advances in micro- and nanofabrication, superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic surfaces have been developed. The statics and dynamics of fluids on these surfaces have been well characterized. However, few investigations have been made into the potential of these surfaces to control and enhance other transport phenomena. In this article, we characterize pool boiling on surfaces with wettabilities varied from superhydrophobic to superhydrophilic, and provide nucleation measurements. The most interesting result of our measurements is that the largest heat transfer coefficients are reached not on surfaces with spatially uniform wettability, but on biphilic surfaces, which juxtapose hydrophilic and hydrophobic regions. We develop an analytical model that describes how biphilic surfaces effectively manage the vapor and liquid transport, delaying critical heat flux and maximizing the heat transfer coefficient. Finally, we manufacture and test the first superbiphilic surfaces (juxtaposing superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic regions), which show exceptional performance in pool boiling, combining high critical heat fluxes over 100 W/cm2 with very high heat transfer coefficients,