International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 147 (2020) 119015

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International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/hmt

Effects of surface inclination and type of surface roughness on the

nucleate boiling heat transfer performance of HFE-7200 dielectric fluid
Ngoctan Tran a,∗, Uzair Sajjad a, Rick Lin b, Chi-Chuan Wang a,∗
a
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, 1001 University Road, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan
b
Delta electronics, Taoyuan 300, Taiwan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In the present work, the effects of surface roughness (including roughness from machined roughness and
Received 18 August 2019 sandblasted roughness), surface inclinations, and heat fluxes on the nucleate pool boiling heat transfer
Revised 3 November 2019
of HFE-7200 dielectric liquid at a working pressure of 1 atm. are examined in detail. Five aluminum
Accepted 6 November 2019
surfaces, with different roughness from 0.45 μm to 9 μm, are employed as test samples. The nucleate
Available online 15 November 2019
boiling phenomenon is examined with the wall-superheat temperature ranging from 5 °C to 30 °C, and
Keywords: surface inclinations of 0°, 90°, and 180°, respectively. SEM images and nucleate boiling bubbles captured
Nucleate pool boiling by a high-speed camera are utilized for further analyses. For all cases in this study, it is found that the
Dielectric fluid nucleate boiling heat transfer of the sandblasted rough surfaces is superior to those of the polished and
Surface roughness machined rough surfaces. For instance, at a wall-superheat temperature of 30 °C and inclination angle of
Inclinations 0°, the heat flux is augmented up to 69.7%, and 139.3% when compared to the polished surface for the
sandblasted surfaces with the roughness of 6.2 μm, and 9 μm, respectively. In addition, novel correlations
are also proposed for predicting the nucleate pool boiling heat transfer coefficient of HEF-7200 dielectric
fluid with different surface roughness, inclinations and heat fluxes.
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The utilization of high heat flux surfaces is quite common in a
lot of industries, e.g., HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air condition-
ing), microelectronic chip cooling, nuclear power plants, boilers,
etc. [1–5]. Cooling is a major concern in these applications for en-
suring safe operation. Appreciable measures to tailor the high-flux
applications had been made available, including jet impingement
cooling, single-phase cooling, spray cooling, cooling with phase
change materials, heat pipes, pool boiling, convective evaporation
and the like [6]. Among these cooling schemes, pool boiling is a
promising method because it can well tackle the issue of high-flux
heat dissipation with a very low wall superheat.
The proficiency of the pool boiling process mainly depends on
the interaction between liquid (wettability) and surface (rough-
ness). In line with this, significant efforts for surface modifica-
tion to augment pool boiling were depicted in the literature.
These surface modifications include micro-pillars [7], micro pin-
fins [8,9], microchannels [10], metal foams [11,12], and porous
∗
Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: ngoctantran73@gmail.com (N. Tran), energyengineer01@
gmail.com (U. Sajjad), RICK.WZ.LIN@deltaww.com (R. Lin), ccwang@nctu.edu.tw (C.-
C. Wang).
coatings [13,14]. The techniques employed for the surface modi-
fication entail various machining processes [15–17], sintering [18],
and electrodeposition [19,20], and chemical vapor deposition [21],
etc. Various refrigerants have been tested and reported includ-
ing ethanol [8], n-pentane [11], R-1234ze and R-134a [22], water
[7,8,10–13, 15,16,19], and dielectric fluids [8,17,23].
For concerns in direct contact of electronic heat devices with
the working fluids, dielectric fluids like hydrofluoroethers (HFE-
70 0 0, HFE-710 0, HFE-720 0, and HFE-730 0) and fluorocarbons (PF-
5060, FC-87, and FC-72) are the best choices because of their high
dielectric strength, better chemical compatibility, and electrical in-
ertness. Besides, these working fluids can well maintain the junc-
tion temperature for electronic devices below the threshold value
(typically in the range 80 °C to 130 °C). A short summary of the lit-
erature regarding the modified surfaces for dielectric fluids subject
to nucleate boiling performance is listed in Table 1.
Based on the aforementioned reviewed literature, it is found
that the two-phase immersion cooling using dielectric fluid is a
promising method for high-flux electronic devices. Among these
dielectric fluids, HFE-7200 not only contains zero ozone depletion
potential and low global warming potential but also has chemi-
cal and thermal stability, non-flammability, and low toxicity [24].
Moreover, the studies on nucleate pool boiling of HFE-7200 dielec-
tric fluid are limited. Hence, further investigation of HFE-7200 di-

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2019.119015
0017-9310/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 N. Tran, U. Sajjad and R. Lin et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 147 (2020) 119015
Nomenclature
A heat transfer area, (m2 )
Tsat wall superheat, (°C)
h heat transfer coefficient, (W/m2 K)
k thermal conductivity, (W/mK)
M the molecular mass, (kg/kmol)
PR reduced pressure, (-)
Q heat transfer rate, (W)
q heat flux, (W/m2 )
Ra surface roughness, (m)
Tsat fluid saturation temperature, (°C)
Tw wall temperature, (°C)
Subscripts
sat saturation
w wall
electric fluid is essential as far as high-performance thermal man-
agement of electronic devices is concerned.
Though dielectric fluids show great potential in immersion
cooling, there are some drawbacks associated with this dielectric
fluid such as low surface tension which makes it highly wetting.
Due to its highly wetting nature, it results in high superheat incip-
ience compared to the non-wetting, low-wetting, and other con-
ventional refrigerants like water. Besides, the thermophysical prop-
erties of HFE-7200 are inferior to typical refrigerants or water. In
this regard, many more studies of the surface modifications are es-
sential for further augment pool boiling heat transfer of dielectric
fluids.
For elaborating the effects of surface modification on the nu-
cleate boiling performance for dielectric fluid. The aim of this
work is to experimentally investigate the effects of type of surface
roughness (machined, polished, and sandblasted), heat flux, and
surface inclination on the saturated nucleate pool boiling of the
well-wetting dielectric liquid, HFE-7200. The corresponding perfor-
mance is explained with the associated visualization of bubble dy-
namics. Tests are conducted at atmospheric pressure. This investi-
gation manifests its individuality in several aspects. Firstly, there
are very limited studies on pool boiling of the well-wetting di-
electric fluid, HFE-7200 (with very low global warming potential)
in the literature. Besides, different fabrication methods (polishing,
machining, and sandblasting) are employed to fabricate rough sur-
faces for a range of roughness and their pool boiling performance,
which is reported and discussed. Moreover, the pool boiling test
results of the surfaces are utilized to derive new correlations for
prediction of nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficient for different
types of surface roughness (for a range of roughness), heat flux,
and surface inclination.
2. Methodology
2.1. Work description
The aim of this investigation is to analyze the effects of sur-
face roughness, surface inclination angle and heat flux on the ther-
mal performance of the HFE-7200 dielectric fluid subject to nucle-
ate pool boiling. Therefore, the wall-superheat temperature ranges
from 5 °C to 30 °C is examined in detail. For investigating the afore-
mentioned effects, five aluminum surfaces, with the surface rough-
ness of 0.45 μm, 0.85 μm, 5 μm, 6.2 μm, and 9 μm, are employed
as test samples and the test results are elaborated in Section 3.1.
The heat flux ranges from 9 kW/m2 to 90 kW/m2 and relevant re-
sults are reported in Section 3.2. Three different surface inclina-
tions, 0°, 90°, and 180°, are examined in Section 3.3. Based on the
present experimental results, correlations for predicting the nucle-
ate pool boiling HTCs for different surface roughness and inclina-
tions are developed and proposed in Section 3.4. For consistency of
presentation, the five test samples, with the surface roughness of
0.45 μm, 0.85 μm, 5 μm, 6.2 μm, and 9 μm, are named as test sam-
ples 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively. Because the surface roughness of
the test sample 1 is too small and polished, thereby it is defined
as a smooth surface and adopted as a baseline.
2.2. Experimental setup, test sample, and testing procedure
In this study, the nucleate pool boiling heat transfer of the HFE-
7200 dielectric fluid is examined on aluminum test samples with
a square area of 40 × 40 mm2 as shown in Fig. 1. Fig. 1(a) presents
a 3D drawing of the test samples and Fig. 1(b) presents the di-
mensions of the test samples. The surface roughness of the test
samples is measured by using a portable surface roughness tester
(model of SJ-210, Mitutoyo). The surface roughness is obtained by
averaging ten times reading of roughness value. In addition, for
more information about the test samples, the surface roughness of
the test samples is also captured by using a scanning electronic
microscope (SEM). SEM images of the five test samples are pre-
sented in Fig. 1(c)–(g) for surface roughness of 0.45 μm, 0.85 μm,
5 μm, 6.2 μm, and 9 μm, respectively. A heating block made of cop-
per is schematically shown in Fig. 2(a). Fig. 2(b) presents the di-
mensions of the heating block and the locations of the correspond-
ing thermocouples on the heating block. Aluminum samples are
attached to the copper heating block. Low melting temperature al-
loy (LMTA) is used to reduce the thermal contact resistance be-
tween the sample and the heating block. Besides, the pressure
is created between the test sample and copper block in order to
further reduce the thermal contact resistance. The contact resis-
tance filled with the LMTA is about 0.03 °C cm2 W−1 as reported
in our recent study [25]; therefore, the contact resistance insignifi-
cantly influences the present measurement. Four cartridge heaters
(with a diameter of 10 mm and length of 50 mm) with a maxi-
mum heat generation of 200 W for each heater are employed as
a heat source. The cartridge heaters are inserted into four holes
at the bottom of the copper block as shown in Fig. 2(a). To re-
duce the heat loss between the heating block and the working
fluid as well as to support the heating block, a liquid-isolated cover
made of Polyetheretherketone (PEEK) is designed and a tiny gap is
also designed between the heating block and the PEEK cover to
increase the thermal resistance between the heat source and the
working fluid aiming at minimizing the heat loss as presented in
Fig. 2(c) and (d). To measure the heat flux from the heat source to
the examining surface, three sheathed thermocouples, T7, T8, and
T9 are designed at a centerline of the copper block as shown in
Fig. 2(b). To measure the heat loss from the upper part of the cop-
per block (after the three measured points), five sheathed thermo-
couples, entitled T2–T6, are installed at five designed locations on
a plane near the top of the heating block as depicted in Fig. 2(b).
To estimate the temperature of the effective surface, a sheathed
thermocouple, T1, is located at the centerline of the test sample as
shown in Fig. 1(b). A schematic diagram of the experimental sys-
tem is presented in Fig. 3. A circular test chamber of total capacity
45 liters (approximate 50 0 mm height and 30 0 mm diameter along
with extended volumes of observation windows) made of stainless
steel 304 with three glass windows (two on the sidewall and third
at the top of the chamber) for lighting and video recording is used
for experimentation. An amount of approximately 34 liters of the
working fluid (HFE-7200 dielectric fluid) is charged into the test
chamber. Non-condensable gases are eliminated by the degassing
device method. The saturated state of the working fluid is con-
trolled by a preheater and a condenser. Temperatures and absolute
pressure of the experimental system are recorded by a data acqui-
 N. Tran, U. Sajjad and R. Lin et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 147 (2020) 119015 3

Table 1
A summary of pool boiling studies of modified surfaces and dielectric fluids.

Fabrication Surface Test Dielectric Comparison with

Reference
methods characteristics conditions fluids plain surface

El-Genk and Suszko [36], Mechanically Roughness value: 0.039 to 1.79 μm Saturated pool boiling PF-5060 150% enhancement in HTC
Suszko and El-Genk roughened at 1 atm (1.72 W/cm2 K), and 37%
[37] enhancement in CHF (21.5 W/cm2 )
Yu et al. [38] MEMS/NEMS Cylindrical cavity arrays Saturated pool boiling FC-72 HTC value 11,000 W/m2 K CHF value
at 1 atm 30,000 W/m2 (2.5 times)
El-Genk and Parker [23] Open cell foams Pores and re-entrant cavities Saturated and HFE-7100 CHF is enhanced up to 60%.
subcooled pool
boiling at 1 atm
Jones et al. [39] Electrical discharge Roughness value: 1.08 to 10.00 μm Saturated pool boiling FC-77 HTC enhancement is up to 120%,
machining at 1 atm while CHF is enhanced up to 40%.
Sahu et al. [40] Spray coating Copper nanofiber of 15–20 μm Saturated pool boiling HFE-7300 CHF is enhanced up to 33%.
at 1 atm
El-Genk and Ali [14] Electrochemical Thickness ranging from 95–220 μm Saturated pool boiling PF-5060 HTC increased up to 17 times, while
deposition at 1 atm CHF up to 70%
Kim et al. [41] Particle sintering Particles ranging from 20 nm to Pool boiling at 1 atm FC-72 76% enhancement in HTC
9 mm placed on polished surface

sition recorder (MX100, Yokogawa) connected to a computer for The actual amount of heat flux through the examined surface is
further analysis. The inclination of the heater surface, as defined in estimated as follows:
Fig. 3, is controlled by a rotational controller. A high-speed cam-
era is placed in front of the side window to capture the boiling Qactual
qactual = (5)
process. A

2.3. Data reduction and uncertainty analysis where A is the cross-sectional area of the examined surface. As the
actual heat transfer area is influenced by the surface roughness;
The cross-section of the effective surface of the test sample is therefore, the cross-sectional area is used in this case. To obtain
designed the same as that of the cross-section of the upper part of the surface temperature, Tw , of the test sample, a sheathed ther-
the heating block, and four sides of the heating block are directly mocouple (T1) is installed at the center of the test sample as de-
contacted with unmoving air within the air gap. The thermal con- picted in Fig. 1(b). Tw is calculated by the following equation:
ductivity of air is extremely small compared to that of the cop-
per. In addition, the experiments are carried out for investigating
qactual L1
Tw = T1 − (6)
the nucleate boiling, thereby the generated heat from the heaters k
would be dissipated by the examining surface. It is assumed that
where the distance between the thermocouple T1 and the examin-
the heat transferred through any point on a cross-section on the
ing surface, temperature obtained by the thermocouple T1, thermal
upper part of the heated block is equal; hence one-dimensional
conductivity of the test sample, and the actual heat flux transferred
conduction law is employed and the heat flux through the cross-
though the examining surface, are denoted by L1 , T1 , k and qactual ,
section of the heating block is estimated as follows:
respectively. The heat transfer coefficient of the examining surface,
dT h, is calculated as follows:
qideal = −kcu (1)
dx
The heat transfer rate through the copper block is calculated as Qideal − Qloss Qactual qactual
h= = = (7)
follows: A(Tsat ) A(Tw − Tsat ) Tw − Tsat
dT
Qideal = −kcu A (2) where Tsat is the saturation temperature of the dielectric fluid, Ais
dx the cross-sectional area of the examining surface. For all the cases
where the temperature gradient, dTdx
, is calculated by Taylor’s series in this study, the investigation is carried out under the saturated
[26,27] for a three-point backward-difference approximation as fol- nucleate pool boiling regime of the HFE-7200 dielectric fluid at the
lows: atmospheric pressure. The saturation temperature of the working
dT 3T7 − 4T8 + T9 fluid is obtained with respect to the measured pressure within the
= (3) testing chamber and is rechecked by the refrigerant measured tem-
dx 2 x
perature. From Zhu et al. [27], the relative uncertainty in the heat
where T7, T8, and T9 are the temperatures measured by thermo- transfer coefficient is estimated as follows:
couples T7, T8, and T9, respectively, which are installed at three
locations as presented in Fig. 2(b), and xis the distance between  2  2  2  12
two neighboring thermocouples T7 and T8 or T8 and T9 as also h q Tw Tsat
= + + (8)
presented in Fig. 2(b). h q Tw − Tsat Tw − Tsat
To measure the heat loss, five thermocouples, including T2, T3,
T4, T5, and T6 are assembled on a plane, which is perpendicular
The accuracies of the temperature measurement and the tol-
to the centerline and near to the top surface of the heating block.
erance of the manufacturing process are ± 0.1 °C and ± 5%, re-
The locations of the thermocouples are presented in Fig. 2(a) and
spectively. The maximum relative uncertainty of the present study
(b). The actual heat transfer rate through the examined surface is
is estimated to be 19.2% at a heat flux of 3.86 kW/m2 of the test
calculated by the following equation:
sample 1 with a surface roughness of 0.45 μm and the inclination
Qactual = Qideal − Qloss (4) angle of 180°.
4 N. Tran, U. Sajjad and R. Lin et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 147 (2020) 119015

Fig. 1. Dimensions of the test sample and the heating block.

 N. Tran, U. Sajjad and R. Lin et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 147 (2020) 119015 5

Fig. 2. Drawings of the heated block and PEEK cover.

3. Results and discussion
3.1. Effect of surface roughness for various surface machining process
on the nucleate pool boiling
In this section, nucleate boiling characteristics of the HFE-7200
dielectric fluid on effective surfaces are examined in detail. Five
aluminum surfaces are employed as test samples, in which one
polished surface with a roughness of 0.45 μm is regarded as a
smooth surface and the baseline; two machined rough surfaces
with the surface roughness of 0.85 μm, and 5 μm, are employed
as machined rough surfaces; and two sandblasted rough surfaces
with the surface roughness of 6.2 μm and 9 μm are examined as
the sandblasted rough surfaces. The nucleate pool boiling phe-
nomenon of the HFE-7200 dielectric fluid is examined at atmo-
spheric pressure and boiling temperature of 76 °C with the wall
superheat ranging from 5 °C to 30 °C. The thermophysical proper-
ties of the HFE-7200 dielectric fluid at the atmospheric condition
are listed in Table 2. The experimental results, in terms of HTC,
wall superheat, and boiling curve, are presented in Fig. 4. Fig. 4(a)
and (b) presents test results of the HTC and wall superheat ver-
sus the surface roughness for three different surface inclination an-
gles of 0°, 90°, and 180° at two fixed heat fluxes of 14 kW/m2 and
40 kW/m2 , respectively. Experiments were repeated at least three
times in order to ensure repeatability of the measurements, and it
is found that consistent results prevail from all the experiments.
6 N. Tran, U. Sajjad and R. Lin et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 147 (2020) 119015
Fig. 3. A schematic diagram of the experimental setup.
Table 2
Thermophysical properties of the HFE-7200 di-
electric fluid (at 1 atm.).
Properties HFE-7200
Formulation C4 F9 OC2 H5
Molecular Wt. 264
Boiling point (°C) 76
Freeze point (°C) −138
Liquid density (g/ml) 1.43
Surface tension (dynes/cm) 13.6
Vapor pressure (mmHg) 109
Viscosity (cps) 0.61
Specific heat (cal/g°C) 0.29
Besides, no hysteresis was found. The results show that the HTCs
increase with the increase in the surface roughness, and the in-
creasing rate of the sandblasted rough surfaces surpasses that of
the machined rough surfaces. The required wall superheat tem-
perature is decreased with the increase in surface roughness. This
is because the roughness can promote the activation process of
the bubble nucleation sites and the bubble departing frequency,
which in turn promotes the nucleate boiling heat transfer [28–32].
The results also show that the wall superheat of the sandblasted
rough surfaces decreases faster than that of the machined rough
surfaces, while the wall superheat of the smooth surface is the
highest.
Fig. 4(c) and (d) presents boiling curves of the five surfaces for
two different surface inclination angles of 0° and 90°, respectively.
The results show that the heat flux (or in terms of wall superheat)
controls the number of active nucleation sites, which are in line
with the prior report [28], meaning increased wall superheat pro-
motes the activation of nucleation sites and decreasing the wall su-
perheat results in reducing activation of nucleation sites. It is found
that at the same wall superheat, the heat flux increases with the
rise of the surface roughness, and this effect is more pronounced
for the surface with higher roughness. Similarly but with different
rising trend, the sandblasted rough surfaces offers a higher heat
transfer performance than that of the machined rough surfaces,
while the smooth surface exhibits the poorest heat transfer perfor-
mance among all the test samples. Specifically, at a wall superheat
of 30 °C and inclination of 0°, the corresponding heat flux is aug-
mented up to 6.2%, 46%, 69.7%, and 139.3% for test samples 2, 3,
4, and 5 respectively, compared to the smooth surface. Fig. 4(e)–
(g) present the photos of nucleate boiling captured by the high-
speed camera at a heat flux value of 9.16 kW/m2 for the test sam-
ples 1 (0.45 μm), 3 (5 μm) and 4 (6.2 μm), respectively. It is noted
that the bubble density subject to high heat fluxes is very difficult
to capture quantitatively; therefore, the photos of boiling phenom-
ena at a lower heat flux of 9.16 kW/m2 are used to elaborate the
test results in subsequent sections. The photos show that the bub-
ble density is increased with the surface roughness. With a higher
surface roughness, the heating surface provides many more cavities
leading to that more bubbles are generated and departed as seen
in the photos. In addition, the bubble density also rises apprecia-
bly against the heat flux under the nucleate pool boiling regime
[29]. As also presented by SEM images in Fig. 1(c)–(g), to create
a smooth surface, the original aluminum surface is polished by us-
ing sandpapers. The smoothness of the surface depends on the size
of the sandpaper and the polishing time. To create a machined
rough surface, the original surface is dug by blades installed on
a machine following a designed direction; therefore, parallel small
channels are created on the surface. The shape, depth, and width
of the channels also depend on the used blades and the applied
force. To create a sandblasted rough surface, sands are injected
directly on the original aluminum surface; therefore, the cavities
are created on the surfaces. The size and depth of the cavities de-
pend on the size of the impingement sands and the impingement
time. By using the aforementioned methods, the smooth, machined
rough, and sandblasted rough surfaces are created as presented
in Fig. 1(c), 1(d,e), and 1(g-f), respectively. The images show that
the cavities in the polished surface (Fig. 1(c)) are very shallow.
The cavities of the sandblasted surfaces are not only deeper but
also much more than those of the machined rough surfaces. The
more and deeper the cavities on a surface area are, the larger the
contacting area between the surface and the working fluid is ob-
tained. The larger contacting porous area results in the more bub-
ble nucleations on the surface. In addition, more nucleating sites
can be activated, and the more the bubbles are generated [33,34].
These reasons explain the increased number of bubbles with the
increase in the surface roughness as presented in Fig. 4(e)–(g). Fig.
4(e) and (f) and the foregoing reasons explain the rise in HTC,
lower wall superheat, and the boiling curves depending on the sur-
face roughness and roughness machining methods as presented in
Fig. 4(a)–(d).
 N. Tran, U. Sajjad and R. Lin et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 147 (2020) 119015 7

Fig. 4. Heat transfer coefficient and temperature differences of different roughnesses.

3.2. Effect of inclination angle on the nucleate boiling
In this section, the nucleate boiling phenomena of the HFE-
7200 dielectric fluid on the three test samples, with the surface
roughness of 0.45 μm, 5 μm, and 9 μm representing for smooth,
machined rough and sandblasted surfaces, respectively, are exam-
ined in detail at three inclination angles of 0°, 90°, and 180°. The
experimental conditions presented in Section 3.1 are employed.
Fig. 5(a) presents the HTCs versus the heat flux of the test samples
for three different inclination angles of 0°, 90°, and 180°, respec-
tively. The results show that the HTC is increased with the heat
flux and surface roughness. For the same surface roughness, the
HTC of the surface with an inclination of 90° is slightly higher
than that with the inclination of 0°. At the same inclination an-
gles of 0°, or 90°, the HTC of the sandblasted rough surface is
much higher than those of the smooth and machined rough sur-
face. For instance, at 40 kW/m2 heat flux and 0° inclination, the
HTCs are improved up to 20% and 73.7% compared to the base-
line for the machined and sandblasted rough surfaces, respectively.
Also for the same heat flux (40 kW/m2 ), the HTC of the sandblasted
surface with the inclination of 90° is 6.7% higher than that of 0°.
With the inclination of 180° and at a heat flux to be smaller than
25 kW/m2 , the HTCs of the machined and sandblasted rough sur-
faces are slightly higher than that with the inclination of 0°; how-
8 N. Tran, U. Sajjad and R. Lin et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 147 (2020) 119015

Fig. 5. The experimental results of nucleate pool boiling for different inclination angles.

ever, that of the smooth surface is lowest when compared to other
inclinations. Fig. 5(b) presents the HTCs versus the wall superheat
of the test samples for three different inclination angles of 0°, 90°,
and 180°. The results show that the HTC increases with the rise
in the wall superheat for all cases. At the same wall superheat,
the HTC with an inclination of 90° is higher than that of 0°. The
HTC of the sandblasted rough surface is much higher than that of
the smooth surface. For instance, at a wall superheat of 17.65 °C
with the inclination of 0°, the HTCs are enhanced up to 34.7% and
218% compared to that of the baseline for the machined rough
surface (5 μm) and the sandblasted rough surface (9 μm), respec-
tively. Fig. 5(c) presents the boiling curve of the three surfaces with
the roughness of 0.45 μm, 5 μm, and 9 μm subject to three inclina-
tions of 0°, 90°, and 180°. The results show that for the inclina-
tions of 0° and 90°, the heat flux increases with the increase in the
wall superheat temperature and the increase in surface roughness.
At the inclination of 180°, the heat flux not only increases very
slowly with the rise of the wall superheat but also is limited un-
der 25 kW/m2 . It is interesting to found that at the low wall super-
heats, the nucleate boiling HTC of the 90° inclined surface is higher
than that of the horizontal one (0°) as aforementioned; however,
when the wall superheat is increased near to 30 °C, the nucleate
boiling HTCs of the two inclinations converge together. Fig. 5(d)–(f)
presents the photos of bubbles captured by the high-speed camera
 N. Tran, U. Sajjad and R. Lin et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 147 (2020) 119015
for the machined rough surface (5 μm) with a fixed heat flux of
9.16 kW/m2 at three inclinations of 0°, 90°, and 180°, respectively.
The photos show that with a horizontal facing-up surface (inclina-
tion of 0°), a bubble departs the nucleation cavity when the buoy-
ancy force of that bubble overcomes surface tension and the grav-
ity force applied to it. Yet, with the 90° inclined surface, a bubble
at the lower sections does not leave the effective surface when it
departs the cavity; it slips alongside the effective surface in the up-
ward direction. Eventually, the sliding bubbles collide and push the
upper bubbles out of their cavities earlier compared to those with-
out the sliding influence. In essence, the bubbles appeared on the
upper sections of the 90° inclined surface are not only the bubbles
of the upper sections but also include bubbles from the lower sec-
tions; therefore, the density of the bubbles of the upper sections is
higher than those of the lower section with the 90° inclined sur-
faces as presented in Fig. 5(e). For the 180° inclination, because the
heated surface is facing down; therefore, the bubbles cannot leave
the surface and go up as other inclinations while the bubbles ac-
cumulated on the surface to engender a vapor film as presented
in Fig. 5(f). With the inclination of 0°, the bubbles can immedi-
ately leave the surface (a nucleate boiling regime) while the sur-
rounding liquid can refill the cavities efficiently to regenerate bub-
bles continuously; therefore, most of the heat, which is transferred
from the heat source to the working fluid, is though the latent
heat. In addition, the higher the wall superheat is, the faster the
bubbles generate and detach the surface leading to the more heat
to be removed from the surface. The foregoing reasons explain for
the increase of the HTCs with the increase in the wall superheat
temperature or the increase in heat flux with the inclination of 0°
as presented in Fig. 5(a)–(c). With the inclination of 90°, at small
wall superheat, the slipping causes the detachment of bubbles at
a higher rate compared to no slipping as aforementioned [33,34];
however, when the wall superheat reaches near to 30 °C, the up-
ward velocity of the lower-section bubbles is slower than that of
departure rate of the upper-section bubbles; therefore, it could not
further increase the departure rate of the upper-section bubbles
anymore. This explains for the HTC of the vertical surface (90°) to
be slightly higher than that of the horizontal one at a low wall
superheat and converges eventually at high wall superheat as pre-
sented in Figs. 4(a), (b) and 5(a)–(c). With the inclination of 180°,
at a low heat flux, the number of generated bubbles is compara-
tively fewer; therefore, it could not cover the overall surface. As a
consequence, the HTC increases with the increased heat flux un-
der 25 kW/m2 depending on the surface roughness as presented
in Fig. 5(a)–(c). When the heat flux is higher than 25 kW/m2 , the
generated bubbles cover the overall surface. At that moment, the
wall superheat increases significantly. The vapor blanket deterio-
rates the HTC appreciably and the wall superheat of the 180° incli-
nation is raised significantly. It is noted that concerning the safety
of the experimental system, the present experiments with the in-
clination of 180° are only carried out for the heat fluxes under
25 kW/m2 .
3.3. Effect of heat flux on the nucleate boiling
In this section, the nucleate pool boiling of the HFE-7200 di-
electric fluid on the five test samples with different heat fluxes in
the range from 0 to 90 kW/m2 and three surface inclined angles of
0°, 90°, and 180° is examined in detail. The experiments are car-
ried out at the same aforementioned conditions. Fig. 6(a), and (b)
presents the heat transfer coefficient versus the heat flux subject to
the surface inclination of the machined and sandblasted rough sur-
faces, respectively. The results indicate that the HTC increases with
the rise in the heat flux and this is the reason why the HTCs of
the sandblasted rough surfaces are much higher than those of the
smooth or machined rough surfaces. Fig. 6(c) presents the boiling
9
curves of the five examined surfaces subject to the three inclina-
tions. The results show that the heat fluxes are increased with the
increase in the wall superheat and with the increase in the surface
roughness [34,35]. The heat fluxes are not linearly increased with
the increase in the surface roughness; yet it depends on the fabri-
cation method. For instance, at a wall superheat of 30 °C, the sur-
face roughness increases from 0.85 μm to 5 μm is 4.15 μm (for two
machined surfaces), from 5 μm (machined) to 6.2 μm (sandblasted)
is 1.2 μm and from 6.2 μm to 9 μm (for two sandblasted surfaces)
is 2.8 μm; however, the heat-flux increases for those groups are
24.56%, 20.1%, and 42.6%, respectively.
Fig. 7(a)–(f) presents nucleate pool boiling photos of a test sam-
ple with the horizontal surface (0°), and the surface roughness of
5 μm for heat fluxes of 9, 15, 25, 34, 39, and 47 kW/m2 , respec-
tively. The images show that an increment in the heat flux in-
creases the density of bubbles [29]. Moreover, it is found that the
bubbles not only go upward but also merge toward the centerline
of the bubble region. This is expected since the buoyancy force cre-
ates a higher rising bubble velocity that leads to a comparatively
low-pressure zone, thereby bubbles move toward the center zone.
In the nucleate boiling region, the rise of heat flux leads to the
activation of more nucleate sites and higher departing frequency
as well. Therefore, the density of the bubbles is increased with
the increase in heat flux as presented in Fig. 7. The higher sur-
face roughness could contain more nucleation sites; therefore, the
HTC increases and the wall superheat temperature is decreased as
discussed in Figs. 4 and 5. These explain for the distributions of
the HTC and wall superheat temperature for the surfaces as pre-
sented in Fig. 6. The density of the bubbles is much smaller than
that of the liquid; therefore, the greater the number of bubbles in
a vapor-and-liquid mixture is, the smaller the density of that mix-
ture is achieved. This leads to the smaller pressure at the vapor-
and-liquid mixed region as compared to that of the liquid region.
This explains the trend of the bubbles that become concentrated
to the centerline as presented in Fig. 7.
3.4. Experimental data verification and correlation development
The test results are compared with a well-known correlation
for predicting the nucleate pool boiling of the flat plate by Cooper
[35] whose correlation is given in Eq. (9).
h = 90PR (0.12−0.4343lnR p ) (−0.4343 ln PR )
−0.55
M−0.5 q0.67 (9)
where PR , Rp , M, and q represent the reduced pressure, surface
roughness, molecular mass, and heat flux respectively. Fig. 8(a)
presents a comparison for experimental HTC and HTC based on
Cooper’s correlation. The comparison shows that a satisfactory
agreement was found and 71.6% of the current data (from the
experiments) against Cooper’s prediction are within ± 40%. The
difference between the present experimental results and Cooper’s
prediction could be due to the differences in the working fluid and
experimental conditions.
On the basis of experimental data, the correlations, which can
well-predict the nucleate pool boiling HTC for the polished, ma-
chined, and sandblasted rough surfaces of the examined range for
the HFE-7200 dielectric fluid at atmospheric working condition, are
proposed, as follows:
For smooth and machined rough surfaces,
hmachined−sur f ace
(0.02242×Ra +0.958 )
= (0.021 + 47.07 ) × Ra 0.01317 × Tsat (10)
For sandblasted rough surfaces,
hsandblasted−sur f aces
(0.021607×Ra +0.394 )
= (0.078 + 155.5 ) × Ra 0.5123 × Tsat (11)
10 N. Tran, U. Sajjad and R. Lin et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 147 (2020) 119015

Fig. 6. Heat transfer coefficients and boiling curves of different heat fluxes.

Fig. 7. Photos of bubble patterns with different heat fluxes.

 N. Tran, U. Sajjad and R. Lin et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 147 (2020) 119015 11

Fig. 8. A comparison between exp. and pred. results for heat transfer coefficients.

where Ra , Tsat , and  are the surface roughness, wall superheat,
and inclination, respectively. A comparison between the experi-
mental and predicted (on the basis of proposed correlation) HTCs
is presented in Fig. 8(b). The comparison shows a decent agree-
ment between the experimental and the predicted data. The pre-
dictive ability of the proposed correlation is that 96% of the test
data falls within ±10% predictive span. Fig. 8(c) and (d) presents
boiling curves, which are predicted by the proposed correlations,
for the machined and sandblasted rough surfaces with ten dif-
ferent surface roughness at the inclinations of 0° and 90°, re-
spectively. The predicted results show that the correlations not
only can regenerate the boiling curves of the examined sur-
faces with the accuracy up to 98% but also can predict the boil-
ing curves for the new surfaces with different roughness very
well.
4. Conclusions
In the present study, the influences of surface roughness, sur-
face inclination, and heat flux on the nucleate pool boiling heat
transfer of HFE-7200 dielectric liquid at the ambient environment
condition (1 atm.) are examined in detail. Five aluminum surfaces
of three groups of different surface roughness, including (1) pol-
ished surface (0.45 μm), (2) machined rough surfaces (0.85 μm and
5 μm), and (3) sandblasted rough surfaces (6.2 μm and 9 μm), are
employed as test samples. The nucleate boiling characteristics are
examined with the wall superheat ranging from 5 °C to 30 °C, and
surface inclinations of 0°, 90°, and 180° SEM images and nucleate
boiling bubbles captured by a high-speed camera are utilized for
further analyses. Based on the foregoing discussions, some conclu-
sions are encapsulated as follows:
12 N. Tran, U. Sajjad and R. Lin et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 147 (2020) 119015
1. The nucleate boiling heat transfer coefficients are improved
with the increase in the surface roughness; however, the
improvement is not linear with the increase in the surface
roughness, but it also depends on the method to create the
roughness. For instance, at 30 °C wall superheat and 0° sur-
face inclination, the heat flux is improved up to 6.2%, 46%,
69.7%, and 139.3% when compared to the baseline for the
surfaces with the roughness of 0.85 μm, 5 μm, 6.2 μm, and
9 μm, respectively. This is because sandblasted rough sur-
faces contain more nucleation sites compared to machined
and polished surfaces.
2. At low wall superheats and low heat fluxes, the nucleate boil-
ing heat transfer performance of a surface with the vertical
arrangement (90°) is higher than that of the horizontal in-
clination (0°). Specifically, at the heat flux of 40 kW/m2 , the
heat transfer coefficient of the sandblasted surface (9 μm)
with the vertical arrangement (90°) is 6.7% higher than that
of the horizontal one (0°). However, no significant differ-
ence in HTC is seen amid vertical or horizontal arrangement
when the wall superheat is increased near to 30 °C.
3. The downward-facing heating surface (inclination of 180°) is
not recommended for using in heat flux over 25 kW/m2 be-
cause the bubbles will be accumulated on the surface and
a vapor film will be formed, deteriorating the heat transfer
significantly.
4. The surface roughness not only promotes the heat transfer
coefficient but also can decrease the wall superheat signif-
icantly. The wall superheat is less for the sandblasted and
machined surfaces compared to the polished surface.
5. Correlations, which are proposed in this study, could predict
the nucleate pool boiling heat transfer coefficients of HFE-
7200 dielectric fluid for polished, machined and sandblasted
rough surfaces at the inclinations of 0° (horizontal facing up)
and 90° (vertical) with the predictive ability to describe 96%
of the test data to be within ±10%.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the Ministry of Science Technology
of Taiwan, under grant numbers: MOST 106-2811-E-009-013 and
107-2622-E-0 09-0 02-CC2. The supports are deeply appreciated.
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