BEHAVIOR OF CLUSTERS ON SMOOTH AND NANO-STRUCTURED SURFACES

X Yan and F Chen and ZY Huang and HL Bo, PROCEEDINGS OF THE 24TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NUCLEAR ENGINEERING, 2016, VOL 3, UNSP V003T09A003 (2016).

Nano-structured surfaces are showing great potential for the promotion of dropwise condensation. When applied as the condensing surfaces in the containment and condenser, it is promising that both the safety and economy of the nuclear power plant will be significantly enhanced. However, the behavior of nano-droplets on surfaces remains to be clarified. As a result, the design or manufacture of nano-structures lack sufficient theoretical instructions. In this work, migration and size distribution of nano-droplets are comparatively studied on smooth and nano-structured surfaces by molecular dynamics simulations. It was found that the migration of an individual nano-droplet on the walls resembles a random walking process, and the migration scope is about 0.5 to 10 times the droplet size; while on the nano-pillared surfaces, migration and coalescence of nano-droplets are limited by the structures, therefore, a larger number of small droplets exist on the surfaces with densely arranged nano-structures.

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