Heat Transfer Laboratory

The heat transfer laboratory undertakes basic and applied research on variety problems in convective heat transfer, two-phase flow, and compressible flow. The specific research interests are placed on the following areas:

Single-phase enhanced heat transfer such as liquid jet impingement cooling.
Two-phase flow: Topics such as enhanced heat transfer by spray cooling mechanism, liquid-solid particulate transport, and boiling heat transfer.
Mist cooling of a heated surface is investigated in terms of the liquid droplet deposition characteristics from a turbulent two-phase flow. Optical measurement of the particle trajectory and its size using a Laser Doppler Velocimetry.
Testing and computational analysis of a micro-scale heat flux gage.
Modeling and computational analysis of a high altitude diffuser which simulates the SSME( Space Shuttle Main Engine) performance.

Heat Transfer Laboratory
Electronic circuits

Electronic circuits for particle size measurement
Test chamber

Test chamber for the jet impingement cooling and the spray cooling experiments.
flow loop

Flow loop for jet impingement cooling and spray cooling.
spray cooling chamber

Test chamber made for the spray cooling in vacuum condition.
Flow visualization

Flow visualization of the highly laden particles(colored particles are tracers)

A channel prepared to study the droplet deposition on a vertical plate

Equipment

60 KVA DC power supply for high power heating
Heat transfer test loop for the jet impingement cooling and spray cooling experiments.
Metrabyte data acquisition systems.
15 mW Helium-Neon laser and LDV system.
Electronic circuits developed for the droplet size measurement using a Laser.
Haake constant temperature liquid bath.
Other electronic equipment such as counter, function generator, HP oscilloscopes, DC power supplies, and plotter.
Computers routed to the CAE center that give an access to the computational software packages.
Adjacent thermodynamics laboratory provides wet steam from a 60 kW steam boiler and a heat exchanger.
For more information contact Dr. Christopher Cho at christopher.cho@wmich.edu or (269) 276-3422.