An Investigation of the Breakup of an Evaporating Liquid Film, Falling Down a Vertical, Uniformly Heated Wall

2001 ◽  
Vol 124 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed S. El-Genk ◽  
Hamed H. Saber

The breakup of an evaporating, thin liquid film falling down a vertical, uniformly heated wall is of interest in many applications. Analytical expressions are developed for predicting the thickness of an evaporating liquid film and the corresponding wetting rate at breakup, which are in good agreement with experimental data for water. These expressions, derived from minimizing the total energy of a stable liquid rivulet forming immediately following the film breakup, required solving for the rivulet profile and the two-dimensional velocity field in the rivulet. The total energy of the rivulet is the sum of the kinetics energy of the liquid, the surface energies at the liquid-vapor and the solid-liquid interfaces, and those due to evaporation and the thermocapillary force along the liquid-vapor interface. The liquid film thickness at breakup is a function of Marangoni number, vapor Reynolds number, liquid and vapor properties, equilibrium contact angle of the liquid with underlying wall material, and the wall thermal conductance <3×104 W/m2K. For a wall conductance <3×104 W/m2K, the film thickness at breakup, when the wall is heated uniformly at its inner surface, is higher than when the wall is heated at its outer surface, but both are identical when the wall conductance ⩾3×104 W/m2K. The contribution of the equilibrium contact angle diminishes, but the thickness of the liquid film at breakup increases, as the wall heat flux increases.

2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuldeep Singh ◽  
Medhat Sharabi ◽  
Richard Jefferson-Loveday ◽  
Stephen Ambrose ◽  
Carol Eastwick ◽  
...  

Abstract In the case of aero-engine, thin lubricating film servers dual purpose of lubrication and cooling. Prediction of dry patches or lubricant starved region in bearing or bearing chambers are required for safe operation of these components. In this work, thin liquid film flow is numerically investigated using the framework of the Eulerian thin film model (ETFM) for conditions, which exhibit partial wetting phenomenon. This model includes a parameter that requires adjustment to account for the dynamic contact angle. Two different experimental data sets have been used for comparisons against simulations, which cover a wide range of operating conditions including varying the flowrate, inclination angle, contact angle, and liquid–gas surface tension coefficient. A new expression for the model parameter has been proposed and calibrated based on the simulated cases. This is employed to predict film thickness on a bearing chamber which is subjected to a complex multiphase flow. From this study, it is observed that the proposed approach shows good quantitative comparisons of the film thickness of flow down an inclined plate and for the representative bearing chamber. A comparison of model predictions with and without wetting and drying capabilities is also presented on the bearing chamber for shaft speed in the range of 2500 RPM to 10,000 RPM and flowrate in the range of 0.5 liter per minute (LPM) to 2.5 LPM.


Author(s):  
Wei Qu ◽  
Jianchao Feng ◽  
Tongze Ma

Thin liquid film profile is important for heat transfer in microscale space. The asymptotic analytical solutions for thin liquid film profile in a capillary tube are obtained by the perturbation method. The variation of the film thickness, the contact angle of the vapor-liquid interface and its axial curvature depend on the effects of the disjoinng pressure and the capillary pressure. The thin liquid film profile will change significantly near the interline region. The obtained solutions are convenient and applicable for problems of thin liquid film in a capillary tube.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huacheng Zhang ◽  
Tutomo Hisano ◽  
Shoji Mori ◽  
Hiroyuki Yoshida

Abstract Annular gas-liquid two-phase flows, such as the flows attached to the fuel rods of boiling water reactors (BWR), are a prevalent occurrence in industrial processes. At the gas-liquid interface of such flows, disturbance waves with diverse velocity and amplitude commonly arise. Since the thin liquid film between two successive disturbance waves leads to the dryout on the heating surface and limits the performance of the BWRs, complete knowledge of the disturbance waves is of great importance for the characterized properties of disturbance waves. The properties of disturbance waves have been studied by numerous researchers through extensive experimental and analytical approaches. However, most of the experimental data and analyses available in the literature are limited to the near atmospheric condition. In consideration of the properties of liquids and gases under atmospheric pressure which are distinct from those under BWR operating conditions (7 MPa, 285 °C), we employed the HFC134a gas and liquid ethanol whose properties at relatively low pressure and temperature (0.7 MPa, 40 °C) are similar to those of steam and water under BWR operating conditions as working fluids in a tubular test section having an inside diameter 5.0mm. Meanwhile, the liquid film thickness is measured by conductance probes. In this study, we report the liquid film thickness characteristics in a two-phase HFC134a gas-liquid ethanol flow. A simple model of the height of a disturbance wave was also proposed.


Author(s):  
K. Singh ◽  
M. Sharabi ◽  
R. Jefferson-Loveday ◽  
S. Ambrose ◽  
C. Eastwick ◽  
...  

Abstract In the case of aero-engine, thin lubricating film servers dual purpose of lubrication and cooling. Prediction of dry patches or lubricant starved region in bearing or bearing chambers are required for safe operation of these components. In the present work thin liquid film flow is numerically investigated using the framework of the Eulerian thin film model (ETFM) for conditions which exhibit partial wetting phenomenon. This model includes a parameter that requires adjustment to account for the dynamic contact angle. Two different experimental data sets have been used for comparisons against simulations, which cover a wide range of operating conditions including varying the flow rate, inclination angle, contact angle, and liquid-gas surface tension coefficient. A new expression for the model parameter has been proposed and calibrated based on the simulated cases. This is employed to predict film thickness on a bearing chamber which is subjected to a complex multiphase flow. From this study, it is observed that the proposed approach shows good quantitative comparisons of the film thickness of flow down an inclined plate and for the representative bearing chamber. A comparison of model predictions with and without wetting and drying capabilities is also presented on the bearing chamber for shaft speed in the range of 2,500 RPM to 10,000 RPM and flow rate in the range of 0.5 liter per minute (LPM) to 2.5 LPM.


2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (5-7) ◽  
pp. 983-990 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroshige Matsuoka ◽  
Koji Oka ◽  
Yusuke Yamashita ◽  
Fumihiro Saeki ◽  
Shigehisa Fukui

2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian E. Fehring ◽  
Roman W. Morse ◽  
Jason Chan ◽  
Kristofer M. Dressler ◽  
Evan T. Hurlburt ◽  
...  

Abstract Instantaneous temperature measurements at the interface between a solid wall and a thin, unsteady liquid film are performed using thermoreflectance, a nonintrusive optical technique with high temporal resolution. A laser beam is directed at a wall–liquid interface, and the intensity of the light reflected at that interface is measured by a photodiode. The intensity of the reflected light varies with the index of refraction of the liquid at the wall. The index of refraction is a function of temperature, which enables the instantaneous measurement of the wall temperature. In the presence of thin liquid films, reflections from the liquid–vapor interface at the free surface of the film generate noise in the measurements. We demonstrate that orienting the laser beam at a large incident angle, close to total internal reflection, minimizes noise from the liquid–vapor interface while increasing the sensitivity of the measurement. The thermoreflectance technique is validated in an unsteady two-phase annular flow. Measurements of temperature fluctuations less than 1 K in amplitude are achieved, with an uncertainty of 0.1 K.


2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Lan ◽  
M. Friedrich ◽  
B. F. Armaly ◽  
J. A. Drallmeier

Measurements and predictions of three-dimensional shear driven thin liquid films by turbulent air flow in a duct are reported. FLUENT - CFD code is used to perform the numerical simulations and the Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes and continuity equations along with the Volume of Fluid (VOF) model and the realizable k-ε turbulence model are implemented for this task. Film thickness and width are reported as a function of air flow rate, liquid film volume flow rate and surface tension, and a comparison with preliminary measured results is made. The thickness of the shear driven liquid film is measured using an interferometric technique that makes use of the phase shift between the reflection of incident light from the top and bottom surfaces of the thin liquid film. The spatial resolution is determined based on the spot size of the incident light, which for the current configuration of the transmitting optics is approximately 10 microns. The resulting fringe pattern is imaged using a high-speed imaging camera operating at 2000 frames per second. The technique has proved successful in measuring thickness between 100 and 900 microns in these shear driven films. Simulation results reveal that higher gas flow velocity decreases the film thickness but increases its width, while higher liquid film flow rate increases the film thickness and increases its width. Reasonable comparison appears to exist between preliminary measured and simulated results.


2004 ◽  
Vol 50 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 177-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. J. Trevelyan ◽  
Serafim Kalliadasis

2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenhai Pan ◽  
Justin A. Weibel ◽  
Suresh V. Garimella

Despite the demand for high-performance, two-phase cooling systems, high-fidelity simulations of flow boiling in complex microchannel geometries remains a challenging numerical problem. We conduct a first-principles-based simulation of an evaporating two-phase flow in a high-aspect-ratio microchannel with bends using a volume of fluid-based numerical model. For the case shown, the lower horizontal section of the microchannel has a constant flux of 20 W/cm2 applied to the wetted wall area (heat flux at the base of 133 W/cm2); HFE-7100 vapor and liquid enter the channel at 2 m/s. The three-dimensional channel geometry requires a refined near-wall numerical mesh to resolve thin liquid film flow features. The recently developed saturated-interface-volume phase change model (Int J Heat Mass Trans 93:945-956, 2016) is implemented for prediction of mass and energy exchange across the liquid-vapor interface at a low computational cost (~80 hr; 6-core parallelization on Intel Xeon E3-1245V3). The model reveals transport details including the interface shape and fluid velocity and temperature fields. The interfacial temperature remains fixed at saturation with smooth velocity contours near the interface. The highest evaporation flux is located in the thin liquid film region near the heated wall.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document