Enhanced Heat Transfer Via Electrostatic Resonance for Thermal Management

With many fields requiring forms of thermal management, new devices can have groundbreaking changes across a variety of industries. This especially applies when working in reduced gravity environments where buoyancy driven convection is reduced, and actively pumping fluids can cause cavitation. Currently, thermal management devices in space can be categorized into either active or passive systems. Active systems typically rely on moving parts while passive devices control temperature without external motion.

Here we propose a system that increases heat transfer through an electrostatic resonance instability in a bilayer fluid interface. In this system, we generate flow via resonance by parametrically forcing the system to its natural frequency. The natural frequency of the system is the frequency at which the interface oscillates in the absence of any external forcing. When parametrically forced to the natural frequency of the system, the flow becomes unstable, and waveforms are generated on the interface of the fluid bilayer. The generation of these waveforms increases convection within the test cell thus increasing the overall heat transfer.

In our experimental trials, we have proved that heat transfer is enhanced due to these unstable waves within our system. An enhancement of heat transfer of up to 55% is obtained when resonant onset occurs. This large increase in heat transfer is normally observed at lower frequencies such as 0.5 or 1 Hz. While this is a substantial increase, optimization of the system by changing fluid layer heights and operating fluids is needed and is part of our future work in addition to testing under microgravity conditions.

Funding is acknowledged from NSF 2025117, NASA 80NSSC 21K0352, and FSGC 80NSSC20M0093.