About the project
This project will carry out fundamental research on the evaporation and condensation processes in heat pipes and closed systems for better understanding and universal dimensionless correlations for different working fluids.
A PhD position is available for conducting experimental studies of the underlying correlations for evaporation and condensation in heat pipes.
Since its invention in the 60s, heat pipes have become established as high performance heat transfer devices in a wide range of applications. While there has been a plethora of theoretical models in the published literature, selecting a suitable model remains challenging due to the complexity of the processes involving phase changes, convective flows, capillary transport, non-equilibrium liquid-vapour phase distributions, and contact angles between the liquids and solid surfaces.
While the ultimate performance of heat pipes is determined by the evaporation and condensation in closed systems, the correlations for pool boiling on a large variety of working fluids have been well developed.
By adopting the strategy for open systems, this project aims for a better understanding of the fundamentals by a systematic experimental study of the evaporation/condensation processes in heat pipes of different working fluids including water, alcohols, hydrocarbons, and modern refrigerants for an extended temperature range and boiling related thermal properties.
Dimensional analysis for dimensionless correlations will be carried out for gaining insights as well as for achieving universality of the derived outcome.
The student will receive training in:
- techniques and methodology for heat transfer experiments,
- dimensional analysis,
- data science tools for large data sets.
This PhD project is partially funded by lead supervisor's research funding (£85k) and partially by Tizard scheme. Personal funding by the candidate welcome.