Heat Mass Transfer (2008) 44:14471453

DOI 10.1007/s00231-008-0384-6

ORIGINAL

Compositive effects of orientation and contact angle on critical

heat flux in pool boiling of water
Liang Liao Ran Bao ZhenHua Liu

Received: 11 June 2007 / Accepted: 26 February 2008 / Published online: 14 March 2008
Springer-Verlag 2008

Abstract An experimental study was carried out to

investigate the effects of heat transfer surface orientation and
the solidliquid contact angle on the boiling heat transfer and
critical heat flux (CHF) in water pool boiling using a smooth
heat-transfer surface under atmospheric pressure. The orientation angle was ranged from 0 (up-facing horizontal
position) to 180 (down-facing horizontal position) with a
pace of 45. The three kinds of heat transfer surfaces having
different solidliquid contact angles were the normal surface
with a contact angle of 55, the hydrophilic surface with a
contact angle of 30 and the superhydrophilic surface with a
contact angle of 0. The experimental results indicate that
orientation and contact angle have complex, coupling effects
on heat transfer and CHF. A predicting correlation for the
CHF which takes the effects of both orientation and contact
angle into account is established. The predicting correlation
agrees reasonably well with the experimental data.

DTsat
r

superheat of heat transfer surface (K)

standard roughness (lm)

Greek symbols
k thermal conductivity [w/(mK)]
d thickness (m)
r surface tension (N/m)
m kinematics viscosity (m2/s)
h orientation (degree)
b solidliquid contact angle (degree)
q density (kg/m3)
e average thickness of vapor layer (m)
Subscripts
l liquid
g vapor

1 Introduction
List of symbols
Q
heat flux (w/m2)
DT
temperature difference (K)
h
heat transfer coefficient [W/(m2 K)]
g
gravity (m/s2)
hfg
latent heat evaporation (J/kg)
p
pressure (Pa)
qm
critical heat flux (w/m2)
qm,Z
the CHF on the horizontal upward metal surface by
the correlation of Zuber (Eq. 3) (w/m2)
L. Liao
R. Bao
Z. Liu (&)
School of Mechanical Engineering,
Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai 200240,
Peoples Republic of China
e-mail: liuzhenh@sjtu.edu.cn

The prediction of the pool boiling critical heat flux (CHF)

has significant importance on the basic boiling heat transfer
research and practical applications. It relates to the maximal heat transfer capacity and the critical safety conditions
of the phase-change heat transfer. The surface wettability is
an important factor affecting CHF and the solidliquid
contact angle is normally used to indicate the wettability.
Therefore, the research concerning the effect of contact
angle on heat transfer and CHF has been gradually paid
attention to recently [15]. Previous studies mostly focused
on changing the combination of fluid and solid surface or
oxidizing the surface to obtain different solidliquid contact angles. However, the range of contact angle obtained
by using these previous methods is limited, and its difficult
to establish a pure relation between CHF and contact angle
because both thermal properties of working fluid and

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Heat Mass Transfer (2008) 44:14471453

heating surface change synchronously. Ramilison et al. [1]

and Kandlikar [2], respectively established empirical correlations for the effect of contact angle on CHF of water
basing on experimental research on horizontal plane surface as shown in Table 1. Takata et al. [3] found that the
CHF of TiO2-coated surface is larger than that of noncoated one in the pool boiling experiment of single water
droplet. In theoretical research, using a dry patch model
which considered the effect of liquidsolid wettability on
dry patch pervasion, Wen et al. [4] numerically calculated
the effect of solidliquid contact angle on the CHF for a
horizontal surface. Xiao et al. [5] also proposed a fractal
model for critical heat flux in pool boiling including contact angle as a factor.
The effect of orientation angle on boiling heat transfer
and CHF is also significant. The previous experiment
results show that the CHF decreases as orientation angle
increases, especially when the orientation angle is over 90
[614]. Vishnev [6] firstly correlated the effect of orientation angle on CHF basing on the cryogenic helium
experimental data. Later, other researchers also proposed
some empirical correlations to predict the effect of orientation on CHF for the normal metal surface as shown in
Table 2.
Almost all of previous experimental researches concerning the effect of solidliquid contact angle on CHF
focused on the upward horizontal surface, and researches
concerning the effect of orientation angle on CHF focused
on the normal metal surface. Whereas, the compositive
effect of both orientation and contact angle on heat transfer
and CHF has not been considered.

The present research employed the TiO2 coating surface

to change the contact angle and obtained three kinds of
heat transfer surfaces with different solidliquid contact
angles. A series of experimental studies of pool boiling
heat transfer at different orientation angles were carried out
for the three kinds of heat transfer surfaces to investigate
the compositive effect of both orientation and contact angle
on heat transfer and CHF. A predicting correlation for CHF
which takes the effects of both orientation and contact
angle into account is established. This correlation can
reasonably reflect the compositive effects of orientation
and contact angle on boiling heat transfer and CHF. The
predicting correlation agrees well with the experimental
data within an error of 5%.

2 Experimental apparatus and procedures

2.1 Coating process of the hydrophilic heat transfer
surface
The hydrophilic surface was made by the dipping method
in the coating process [15]. In the dipping method, TiO2
colloid was used. The top surface of the copper bar was
polished to mirror-like surface and washed by hydrochloric
acid and then by acetone and ion-exchanged water. When
the surface became dry, the top surface of the copper bar
was dipped into TiO2 colloid and extracted slowly. After
this dipping process, the copper bar hydrolyzed in the moist
air for 24 h and then was put into an oven and heated to
450C by a velocity of 5C per min. The copper bar was

Table 1 The effect of contact angle on CHF for horizontal upward surface
Reference

Correlation

Ramilison et al. [1]

qm
qm;Z

Kandlikar [2]

3
p
0:0336 p  180

b
r 0:125

q
0:5
b 2
p
qm hfg 4 q2g grql  qg 1cos
16
p 4 1 cos b cos h

(5)
(6)

Table 2 The effect of orientation on CHF for normal metal surface

Reference

Substance

Correlation

Vishnev [6]

Helium

qm
qm;Z

El-Genk and Guo [7]

Water

qm 0:034 0:0037180  h0:656 hfg

Chang and You [8]

FC-72

qm
qm;Z

Brusstar and Merte [10]

R113

Howard and Mudawar [11] (for orientation

in 60165)

FC-72

Arik and Bar-Cohen [12]

HFE-7100 and
FC-72

qm
qm;Z

1  0:001117h 7:79401  106  h2  1:37678  107  h3

(12)

El-Genk and Bostanci [13]

FC-72

qm
qm;Z

h
i0:25
1  0:00127h4 3:03  0:016h4

(13)

123

0:5

190h
1900:5

q
4
q2g grql  qg

1:0  0:00012h tan 0:414h  0:122 sin 0:318h



1:0
0 \h  90

0:5
sin hh
90  h\165

p  re i1=2
1
qm 4 qg hfg
2 2p q k2

qm
qm;Z

(7)
(8)
(9)
(10)
(11)

g c

Heat Mass Transfer (2008) 44:14471453

heated for an hour in the oven and then cooled slowly. The
thickness of the TiO2 coated layer was measured by an
interferometer. The thickness was about 1 lm. The TiO2
coated surface produces hydrophilic characteristic with a
solidliquid contact angle of 30 and produces superhydrophilic characteristic with a solidliquid contact angle of
0 after being exposed to ultraviolet light.
The contact angle was measured by means of sessile
drop method in room temperature. The specimen was
irradiated by ultraviolet lights of the peak wavelengths
between 275 and 315 nm. For the superhydrophilic surface,
the water drop entirely expended and covered the whole
surface. Therefore, the accurate value of the contact angle
cannot be obtained. However, it can be confirmed that the
contact angle on the superhydrophilic surface is close to
zero. When there is no ultraviolet light, the mean contact
angle on the TiO2 coated surface is 30, while the mean
contact angle on a conventional copper surface is close to
55. Afterwards, the TiO2 coated surface under the ultraviolet light is named as the superhydrophilic surface and
the TiO2 coated surface without exposing under the ultraviolet light is named as the hydrophilic surface.
As to the copper surface, the average roughness is equal
to 197 nm, and standard roughness is 258 nm. However,
for the TiO2 coated surface, the average roughness is equal
to 105 nm, standard roughness is 130 nm. It is found that
the roughness on the TiO2 coated surface is significantly
less than that on the copper surface. The roughness was

1449

measured by atomic force microscope (AFM) NanoScope

IIIA manufactured by Digital Instruments.
In the present study, the conventional copper surface
with average contact angle of 55 is named as the copper
surface, the hydrophilic surface with a contact angle of 30
is named as surface A, and the superhydrophilic surface
with a contact angle of 0 is named as surface B.
2.2 Experimental apparatus
De-ionized water was used as the working fluid and all
tests were carried out at atmospheric pressure.
Figure 1 shows the schematic diagram of the experimental apparatus. The apparatus mainly consisted of a
main vessel, an outer isothermal vessel, a heated copper
block, an electronic supply and a digital data acquisition
system. The main vessel made of stainless steel had a
diameter of 250 mm and a height of 400 mm. The upper
part of the main vessel was a water tank to contain the
working liquid and the lower part of the vessel was a closed
heating box to mount the heater component. The space
between the vessel and the adiabatic tank was filled with
asbestos. The heater component was a cylinder copper bar
having 40 mm diameter and 120 mm height. The upper
part was lathed to a diameter of 20 mm, and the top surface
of the copper bar was used as the heat transfer surface. The
main heater was a cartridge electric heater which was
inserted into the copper bar. The copper bar was inserted

Fig. 1 Schematic diagram of

the experimental apparatus

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Heat Mass Transfer (2008) 44:14471453

into a cylinder Teflon bar with an outer diameter of

100 mm and the Teflon bar was mounted in the test vessel.
Silicone glue was used to prevent leakage.
Figure 2 shows the layout of measuring thermocouples
in the upper column of the copper bar. Three U 1.0 mm
thermocouples were inserted at the center axial line perpendicularly of the upper column of the copper bar. The
distances between the thermocouples were 3.0 mm and the
distance between the top thermocouples and the heat
transfer surface was 2.0 mm. An alarm thermocouple was
inserted at the bottom of the copper bar and the measured
value was fed into a PID temperature controller as a feed
back signal, which adjusted the power supply preventing
the maximum temperature of the copper bar form
exceeding 750C. All these thermocouples were connected
with the temperature controller, and signals from these
thermocouples were measured by a digital voltmeter (Agilent-34970A) and then fed into a computer. In this
experiment, it has been confirmed that the assumption of
one-dimensional heat condition along the axial direction is
very well satisfied in the upper column of the copper by
numerical simulation and experimental confirmation.
Therefore, the heat flux can be calculated according to the
measured temperatures of thermocouples and the onedimensional Fouriers Law:
k
q DT
d

As the heat flux was calculated, the wall temperature can

then be known by Eq. 1. The superheat was obtained by the
wall temperatures minus the saturated temperature of water
at atmospheric pressure (100C). All of the measurements
were performed in steady state.
During each run, electric power was increased gradually. The computer not only measured the wall temperature
and wall heat flux instantaneously, but also gave an alarm
when the wall temperature increased quickly and did not
attain a steady state. Such an alarm meant that the boiling
crisis occurred. Therefore, the electric power was automatically cut off. After the boiling crisis occurred, the test
was repeated from the steady state of the former time. The
output electric power was increased slowly by an increment of 1% of the former time. When the boiling crisis
occurred again, the test was stopped and the wall heat flux
of the former time was determined as the CHF.
The uncertainty of the experimental data concerns five
parameters as follows: (1) The maximum calibration error
of the thermocouples was 0.2 K. (2) The maximum relative
location error between thermocouples in the vertical
direction was about 1%. (3) The maximum relative error
from thermal conductivity of the copper block was estimated to be 2%. (4) The instrument precision grade was
0.5. (5) For the measurement error of the CHF, a truncation
error of the increasing step of the heating power which was
about 1% should be added. Thus the maximum uncertainties of heat flux and the heat transfer coefficient were
about 9 and 14%, respectively. The uncertainties of heat
flux and the heat transfer coefficient are the root mean
square error calculated by the error transfer by all indirect
measurements.

3 Results and discussion

3.1 Effects of orientation and solidliquid contact
angle on the boiling curve

Fig. 2 Schematic diagram of the locations of thermocouples in the

copper block

123

In the present paper, the horizontal upward facing surface

is defined as the orientation angle of 0 and then the horizontal downward facing surface is naturally the orientation
angle of 180.
Figure 3a shows the effect of contact angle on pool
boiling curves of water at atmospheric pressure when the
orientation is 0. It can be observed that the pool boiling
heat transfer and the CHF of water on the horizontal
upward copper surface agree reasonably well with the
correlation Eq. 2 by Kutateladze [16] with a maximum
deviation of 24% and Eq. 3 by Zuber [17] with a maximum
deviation of 8%. Figure 3b shows the effect of orientation
angle on pool boiling curves with copper surface whose
contact angle is 55.

Heat Mass Transfer (2008) 44:14471453

h
k

1451

r
r
7:0104 Pr0:35
l
gql qv

r0:7
r0:7
q
r
p
r

qv hfg ml gql qv
r gql qv
2

qm;0

p q
hfg 4 q2g grqf  qg
24

As shown in Fig. 3a, for the same orientation, the heat

transfer coefficient of surface A is a little worse than that of
the copper surface, while that of surface B is much worse
than that of the copper surface. It has been well known that
the boiling heat transfer coefficient would decrease with
decreasing the contact angle since a smaller contact angle
would reduce the nucleation so as to make the bubbles
generation harder.
As demonstrated in Fig. 3b, with the same contact
angle, the heat transfer coefficient decreases as the orientation increases. It decreases slightly when the orientation

Fig. 3 a The effect of contact angle on boiling curves when the

orientation is 0. b The effect of orientation on boiling curves when
the contact angle is 55 (the copper surface)

changes from 0 to 90, and then decreases dramatically

when the orientation is close to 180. The reason is that
when the orientation is in 090 the boiling bubbles can
easy escape from the heat transfer surface due to the effect
of buoyancy. The heat transfer surface can contact liquid
easy so that the heat transfer coefficient and the CHF keep
in a high region. While at a position of orientation about
180, the bubbles are blocked by the heat transfer surface
and accumulate densely there to stop the fresh liquid supply to the heat transfer surface. Therefore, both the heat
transfer coefficient and the CHF diminish markedly compared with those corresponding to the orientation of 0.
3.2 Effects of orientation and solidliquid contact
angle on CHF
There already existed several empirical correlations to
predict the effect of solidliquid contact angle on CHF for
the horizontal upward plane surface. However, there are
significant differences among these predicating correlations. Figure 4 shows the comparison of the present CHF
data on the horizontal upward copper surface with these
empirical correlations and numerical calculated results by
Wen et al. [4] and Xiao et al. [5]. It is found that the present
experimental data shows good agreement with the calculated result of Wen et al. [4] within a relative error of 7%,
and also agrees well with the correlation by Kandlikar [2]
within a relative error of 12%. The deviations between the
other correlations and the present data are large.
It is clear that the solidliquid contact angle affects CHF
significantly. Compared with the CHF of the copper surface, that of surface A increases about 13% and that of
surface B increases about 28%. The reason is that with the
decrease of contact angle, the solidliquid wettability

Fig. 4 Effect of contact angle on CHF at horizontal upward-facing

surface

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Heat Mass Transfer (2008) 44:14471453

improved. Basing on dry patches theory the dry patches are

difficult to diffuse and thereby delay the occurrence of the
boiling crisis.
Figure 5 shows the effect of orientation on CHF for the
copper surface. In the range of orientation of 090, the
CHF has no significant change. The orientation has little
effect on CHF because the bubbles can escape smoothly
from the surface. When the orientation is over 90, the
CHF decreases rapidly while the orientation increases, due
to that the bubbles escaping from the downward-facing
surface is much harder than that from the upward-facing
surface. The accumulated bubbles prevent the liquid supply
to the heat transfer surface and lead to the early occurrence
of the boiling crisis.
The experimental result shows: at an orientation angle of
135, the CHF of the copper surface decreases 14% compared with the orientation of 0, that of the surface A
decreases 17% while that of the surface B decreases 24%.
The CHFs of three kinds of surfaces all decreases 76%
when the orientation angle is 180 compared with those
when the orientation is 0.
For the normal metal surface such as copper and stainless surface, there are a lot empirical correlations to
indicate the effect of orientation on CHF as shown in
Table 2. It is found in Fig. 5 that the present CHF experimental data of the copper surface agrees well with the
empirical correlation by Brusstar and Merte [10] within an
error of 4%; and with the empirical correlation by Chang
and You [8] within an error of 8% when the orientation is
under 135; and with the empirical correlation by El-Genk
and Bostanci [13] within an error of 20%. But, the deviations are great between the other correlations and the
present CHF experimental data of the copper surface. The
reason may be that the working liquids they used were not
water, and the sizes and geometries of the heat transfer
surface had somewhat effects on CHF as well. Up to now,

there is no suitable predicating correlation used for the

nonmetal surface, especially for the surface having very
small contact angle yet.
Figure 6 illustrates the CHFs of three surfaces at the
different orientations. Here, qm is the CHF for any orientation and contact angle. It is found that the effects of
orientation and contact angle on CHF are not independent
of each other, and there is a complex coupling relation
between them. For the horizontal upward-facing surface,
the CHF of the surface A increases 12% and that of the
surface B increases 28% compared with that of the copper
surface. While for the horizontal downward-facing surface, the CHF of the surface A increases 7% and that of
the surface B increases 16% compared with that of the
copper surface. The CHF ratio decreases as increasing the
orientation or increasing the contact angle. This is
because with the increase of orientation, more bubbles
accumulate on the heat transfer surface to decrease the
contact area of solid and liquid which weakens the effect
of the contact angle on the CHF. The previous studies on
the correlations predicting the effect of solidliquid contact angle on CHF are aimed only at the horizontal
upward surface and are not suitable for the other orientation conditions.
Using the nonlinear curve fitting offered by software
ORIGIN 7.0, a predicting correlation for CHF taking the
effects of both orientation and contact angle into account is
proposed as below:


qm
1:73
0:73
qm;Z
1 100:021185:4h 

55  b

0:56  0:0013h
4
 1
100

Fig. 5 Effect of orientation on CHF at the copper surface

Fig. 6 Comparison between experimental CHF data and Eq. 4

123

The effect of orientation is expressed by the first item on

the right-hand of the equation, and the effect of contact
angle is reflected by the second. Equation 4 can be used in

Heat Mass Transfer (2008) 44:14471453

case of water pool boiling at atmospheric pressure. The

range of orientation is from 0 to 180 and the range of
contact angle is from 0 to 55. Figure 6 shows the
comprising results between Eq. 4 and the present CHF
experimental data and the maximum relative error of the
correlation is 5 %.

4 Conclusion
An experimental study was carried out to investigate the
effects of heat transfer surface orientation and the solid
liquid contact angle on boiling heat transfer and critical
heat flux (CHF) in water pool boiling using a smooth heattransfer surface under atmospheric pressure. The following
conclusions are obtained.
(1)

(2)

(3)

Concerning the effect of surface orientation on heat

transfer and CHF, the orientation can be divided into
two ranges: upward-facing surface (090) and
downward-facing surface (90180). For upwardfacing surface, the change of heat transfer and CHF is
slight. For downward-facing surface, heat transfer and
CHF decrease sharply with the increase of
orientation.
The solidliquid contact angle has significant and
complex effect on CHF. The CHF increases 1628%
for surface B compared with the copper surface at the
surface orientation of 0180. While the CHF
increases are 712% for surface A at the same
orientation range. Reducing the contact angle can
significantly enhance the CHF at small orientation
conditions, and the enhancement ratio weakens with
the increase of orientation.
A prediction correlation for CHF taking the effects of
both orientation and contact angle into account is
proposed. It can well reflect the coupling effects of
orientation and contact angle on CHF, and agrees
reasonably well with the present experimental data
within an error of 5%.

Acknowledgment Special thanks are given to the instrument

analysis center of Shanghai Jiaotong University for roughness measurement in this research.

1453

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