The evaporation of nanoscale sodium liquid film on the non-ideal nanostructure surface: A molecular dynamics study

The nanoscale liquid sodium film inside the microporous wick structure is of great importance to understanding the evaporation mechanism of the sodium heat pipe. The novel optimized wick structure is made of several layers of special screen. The surface of each screen exhibits a nanostructure type. Some non-ideal nanostructures may result from experimental faults or limits. And they will have an effect on the evaporation of film. In the present study, molecular dynamics is adopted to investigate this effect. The simulation system consists of the liquid sodium film and the solid surface. The flat surface is set as the reference. Based on the three non-ideal shapes of deposition, the sinusoidal nanostructures, conical nanostructures, and spherical nanostructures are built. The results indicate that the evaporation is suppressed by the above nanostructure surfaces. The weakening effect is through three forms: the potential gradient of the liquid film is intensified and the evaporation difficulty is increased; the heat transfer in the solid-liquid contact region is impeded; the collision heat transfer inside the liquid film is affected due to the delay of the aggregation variation between liquid atoms.