The relentless miniaturization of modern electronics has created a critical challenge: how to efficiently dissipate heat from increasingly powerful chips. Traditional cooling methods struggle with localized hot spots, making advanced liquid-based strategies necessary. Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) forces use electric fields to precisely move and shape droplets, while Marangoni stresses arise from surface-tension gradients that drive fluid flow. This research targets the application of these coupled forces to enhance droplet-based heat transfer. The objective is to understand how electric fields and thermal gradients work in tandem to influence droplet motion, deformation, and evaporation under realistic heated-chip conditions. To systematically investigate this, a customized solver is being developed within the open-source OpenFOAM platform. OpenFOAM is a leading CFD toolbox that employs the Volume of Fluid (VOF) method to capture sharp fluid interfaces, handle large deformations, and accurately resolve surface tension—making it ideal for droplet dynamics. Its modular architecture allows seamless addition of custom force models to incorporate various physical effects. Using this framework, continuous velocity, pressure, and temperature fields are predicted, and the coupled effects on heat transfer are quantified. The present research aims to provide quantitative insights into how combined EHD and Marangoni forces influence droplet-based cooling, contributing toward more efficient thermal management strategies for high-power electronics.
Efficient heat transfer underpins emerging technologies such as electronics cooling, microfluidics, and advanced phase change systems, where interfacial dynamics critically affect thermal performance. Modeling these processes demands accurate representation of interfacial motion, deformation, and phase transformation under coupled thermal and flow conditions. To address these challenges, this research employs the OpenFOAM computational framework for modeling multiphase and phase-change flows. The work utilizes and customizes the advanced geometric Volume of Fluid (VOF) formulations available in the TwoPhaseFlow framework, which employ interface reconstruction techniques to maintain sharp phase boundaries and accurately capture surface tension effects. These capabilities enable high fidelity prediction of droplet impact, film evolution, and evaporation -condensation behaviour under diverse thermal and flow conditions. Building upon this framework, electrohydrodynamic (EHD) effects are investigated to understand how electric fields can influence interfacial motion and augment heat transfer. The interplay between EHD forces, Marangoni stresses, and natural convection reveals mechanisms for active control of fluid flow and thermal transport in both single phase and phase change regimes. Such coupled analyses deepen the understanding of field driven interfacial phenomena and contribute to the design of next generation cooling and energy conversion systems.