We studied, using both experiments and a numerical model, the impact of water droplets on a hot stainless steel surface. Initial substrate temperatures were varied from 50°C to 120°C (low enough to prevent boiling in the drop) and impact velocities from 0.5 to 4 m/s. Fluid mechanics and heat transfer during droplet impact were modelled using a “Volume-of-Fluid” (VOF) code. Numerical calculations of droplet shape and substrate temperature during impact agreed well with experimental results. Both simulations and experiments show that increasing impact velocity enhances heat flux from the substrate by only a small amount. The principal effect of raising droplet velocity is that it makes the droplet spread more during impact, increasing the wetted area across which heat transfer takes place. We also developed a simple model of heat transfer into the droplet by one-dimensional conduction across a thin boundary layer which gives estimates of droplet cooling effectiveness that agree well with results from the numerical model. The analytical model predicts that for fixed Reynolds number (Re) cooling effectiveness increases with Weber number (We). However, for large Weber numbers, when We is much greater-than SQRT(Re), cooling effectiveness is independent of droplet velocity or size and depends only on the Prandtl number.

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