Critical heat flux in flowing liquid films

Experimental results for the critical heat flux (CHF) and boiling curve in liquid films were found in substantial agreement with recently-reported findings of other investigators. The main liquid film was observed to separate from the heater surface below CHF, leaving a thinner flowing subfilm. Drop deposition from the main film replenished the latter. When this replenishment was insufficient to compensate for subfilm evaporation, CHF occurred. A model based on the trajectories of deposited drops is proposed to explain the form of the correlating equation to within a constant.