4. Confined boiling

The possibilities offered by micro-machining techniques, and the growing demand for thermal management of miniaturized systems, have motivated a great deal of research into boiling heat transfer in microchannels and, more generally, on small scales. Boiling heat transfer, whether convective boiling [BE 8 236] or natural boiling (i.e. where gravity is the driving force between the phases), can be significantly modified if the fluid (whether liquid, vapour or both) is confined to the vicinity of the heated wall. The large increase in the surface-to-volume or surface-to-mass ratio affects the mass, momentum...