Experimental investigation of surface temperature non-uniformity in spray cooling

•The distributions of spray characteristics under different conditions were measured.•Relationship between spray characteristics and surface temperature was established.•Surface temperature non-uniformity was predicted by the model in the present study. The surface temperature non-uniformity is crucial in understanding the heat transfer mechanism of spray cooling. It is also a sensitive factor in the thermal management of electronic devices or in the application of transient sprays where the surface heat flux is obtained from the internal temperature measurement. In this study, the effects of heat flux, subcooling, nozzle-to-surface height, and injection pressures on the surface temperature uniformity in a spray cooling application were studied. The distribution of droplet diameter and the spray volumetric flux was found to significantly vary under the above experimental conditions. A higher spray volumetric flux and smaller droplet diameter resulted in a lower surface temperature. In general, the spray volumetric flux is the dominant parameter. The effect of droplet diameter distribution always became obvious with low spray volumetric flux. Regarding the high spray volumetric flux, there was an offset between these two parameters. The results also indicated that increasing the heat flux, nozzle-to-surface height, and subcooling, as well as decreasing the inlet pressure, all resulted in higher surface temperature uniformity owing to the variation in the droplet diameter and spray volumetric flux distributions. Finally, prediction methods for temperature non-uniformity were proposed for single-phase and two-phase regimes.