Sensible Heat Transfer during Droplet Cooling: Experimental and Numerical Analysis

This study presents the numerical reproduction of the entire surface temperature field resulting from a water droplet spreading on a heated surface, which is compared with experimental data. High-speed infrared thermography of the back side of the surface and high-speed images of the side view of the impinging droplet were used to infer on the solid surface temperature field and on droplet dynamics. Numerical reproduction of the phenomena was performed using OpenFOAM CFD toolbox. An enhanced volume of fluid (VOF) model was further modified for this purpose. The proposed modifications include the coupling of temperature fields between the fluid and the solid regions, to account for transient heat conduction within the solid. The results evidence an extremely good agreement between the temporal evolution of the measured and simulated spreading factors of the considered droplet impacts. The numerical and experimental dimensionless surface temperature profiles within the solid surface and along the droplet radius, were also in good agreement. Most of the differences were within the experimental measurements uncertainty. The numerical results allowed relating the solid surface temperature profiles with the fluid flow. During spreading, liquid recirculation within the rim, leads to the appearance of different regions of heat transfer that can be correlated with the vorticity field within the droplet.