Recent Advances in Closed Loop Spray Cooling and its Application in Airborne Systems

In recent years, the problem of heat dissipation in airborne directed energy weapons has attracted considerable research interest. Spray cooling can be applied to cool airborne directed energy weapons, owing to its several advantages such as a large heat transfer coefficient, absence of boiling hysteresis and uniform surface temperature. To examine the potential of an airborne spray cooling system, the typical high heat flux dissipation methods were compared, and the state of the art research on spray cooling was reviewed. This review was focused on studies related to the spray cooling hydrodynamic mechanism, experimental studies of closed loop spray cooling, numerical simulation studies about spray cooling and the identification of the factors influencing spray cooling systems, and investigations related to the multiple nozzle spray cooling technology and heat transfer correlation predictions. Overall, there is a need for further research to investigate the failure phenomenon after the critical state, matching operation of the total system and microscopic characteristics of airborne specific parameters.