Dynamics of explosive boiling of a droplet

The dynamical behavior of the unstable explosive boiling of single droplets (1–2 mm diam) of diethyl ether, pentane, and isopentane at the superheat limit has been exhibited in detail. A+high ambient pressures, boiling consists of normal stable growth of a smooth bubble. At intermediate pressures a transitional regime of stability occurs in which a drop initially vaporizes stably for several milliseconds while incipient instability waves develop on the evaporating interface, then increased heat flux from the host liquid initiates violent boiling near the edge of the remnant volatile liquid. Direct evidence has been obtained that during violently unstable boiling, fine liquid particles are torn from the liquid–vapor interface, generating a mass flux orders of magnitude greater than that characteristic of ordinary boiling. In this regime of transitional stability, one of a number of different possible kinds of disturbances could externally trigger a breakdown to violent instability. After the evaporative instability becomes nonlinear and saturates, the boiling appears quasisteady, with the evaporative front moving into the volatile liquid at a roughly constant velocity. Results obtained by modeling the evaporation wave as a Chapman–Jouguet deflagration show that the temperature at the unstably boiling interface is substantially above the saturated value.