Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The rate at which heat transfers across fluid-fluid and fluid-solid interfaces is critically important to many environmental and engineering applications. The proposed research is aimed at investigating the fundamental flow and thermal processes that influence/control the interfacial heat transfer. It will focus on the investigations at both air-water and solid-fluid interfaces. At the air-water interface, the physical interaction between air and water involves a number of complex phenomena, occurring on both air and water sides in the close vicinity of their interface. Due to the complexity of the flow and challenging nature of measurements in the vicinity of the fluctuating interface, the fundamental transport processes across the air-water interface are poorly understood. The heat exchange between a fluid and a solid wall is the fundamental heat transfer process in a wide variety of energy systems. Due to the strong interaction of flow and thermal fields in the near-wall region, the nature of flow in this region is quite complex and not well understood and thus, designing and optimization of heat exchanging devices is heavily relied on empirical relations and bulk characteristics. The objectives of the proposed research are to investigate flow and thermal fields in the interfacial/near-interfacial region, and identify and investigate the physical mechanisms that influence interfacial heat transport process. The research is also aimed at improving the remote sensing techniques for accurate prediction of interfacial heat transfer rate. The results from this study will improve our understanding of the physical mechanisms that control interfacial heat transfer and more generally, to a better understanding of the transport processes at the air-water and solid-fluid interfaces. The outcome of this research will allow to improve parameterization of air-sea heat flux, and to develop/improve passive heat enhancement techniques that will lead to an improvement in the thermal performance of heat exchanging devices which will enhance the thermal efficiency of a wide variety of energy systems.