On the Influence of the Thickness and Thermal Properties of Heating Walls on the Heat Transfer Coefficients in Nucleate Pool Boiling

Abstract

An experimental investigation was conducted under conditions of saturated pool boiling of water at atmospheric pressure on thin, horizontal, cylindrical walls of different metals and thicknesses, electrically heated. The heating walls, ranging in thickness from 5 to 250 μm, were obtained by plating copper, silver, zinc, nickel, and tin on nonmetallic rods. Experiments showed that the heat transfer coefficient can be affected, in particular conditions, by the heating wall thickness. In particular, it resulted that the smaller the thermal conductivity of the metal layer, the higher the influence of the thickness. A semiempirical correlation of the form ΔT = (q/A)nf(κd, √κρc) suitable to correlate the experimental data within ±15 percent in the whole range of variables here investigated is proposed.