What's heat flux and heat capacity?

[dopamine1]

I was messing around with a coil calculator and I noticed they added something new to it. Heat flux and heat capacity. Do you want them higher or lower or what? Also I put the wattage of the coil in the heat flux section when it was originally set at 10 watts, should you adjust that or leave it?

 

[TheKiwi]

The heat capacity refers to how much heat energy (milli joules) is required to raise the temperature of a material by 1 K (temperature) per unit mass

The heat flux refers to how much heat energy (in this case, power/watts is used to represent heat) is given off from a unit area (mm^2) of the coil's surface.

Very technically speaking, the units used are in shambles, but you get the rough idea, which is probably intended by the app maker.

In terms of whether you want it higher or lower... It depends how you like your vape. The
Immediate implications are:

1) higher the heat capacity, more more energy is needed to get it to heat up to what you want.

This means that keeping ALL else constant (resistance, amps, wattage, yada yada), a wire with a lower heat capacity will be hotter than one with a higher heat capacity.

2) the higher the heat flux, the more heat is "given" off, assuming constant surface area.

 

[heyilikethis]

o wow, thats really getting into the finer details of rebuilding, over my head for the moment , nice info kiwi

 

[dopamine1]

Ok I think I understand, the heat capacity is how much energy a wire can 'hold' before it begins to heat up, or the energy that will push it to that point. And the heat flux is just a measure of the heat per square milimeter...

I'm trying to figure out how to use these to make a coil that gives a ton of relatively cool vapor with a lot of flavor. I think you would want high capacity but not too much flux? Wonder what kind of coil would do that. I saw that a 1.8 ohm coil ran at 50 watts had much more flux than a sub ohm coil at the same wattage. So maybe use thicker wire? But then you have a lower resistance and higher wattage and then more heat flux because of that... and that's not what I'm looking for.