Numerical Investigation On Bubble Growth and Merger in Microchannel Flow Boiling with Self-rewetting Fluid

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Li ◽  
Yuhao Lin ◽  
Yang Luo

Abstract The application of two-phase flow in microchannel needs further research to achieve a more stable and highly-performed heat sink. Utilizing self-rewetting fluid is one of the promising ways to minimize the dryout area, thus increasing the heat transfer coefficient and critical heat flux (CHF). To investigate the heat transfer performance of self-rewetting fluid in microchannel flow boiling, a numerical investigation is carried out in this study utilizing the VOF method, phase-change model and continuum surface force (CSF) model with surface tension versus temperature. Athree-dimensional numerical investigation of bubble growth and merger is carried out with water and 0.2%wt heptanol solution. The single bubble growing cases, two x-direction/y-direction bubbles merging cases and three bubbles merging cases are conducted. Since the bubbles never detach the heated walls, the dryout area and regions nearby the contact line with thin liquid film dominated the heat transfer process during the bubbles' growth and merger. The self-rewetting fluid is able to minimize the local dryout area and achieve the larger thin liquid film area around the contact line due to the Marangoni effect and thermocapillary force, thus result in higher wall heat flux when compared to water. The two x-direction bubbles merging case performed best for heat transfer in the microchannel, in which self-rewetting fluid achieves heat transfer enhancement for over 50 percent compared with water.

Author(s):  
Yu-Yan Jiang ◽  
Da-Wei Tang

The evaporation and heat transfer of thin liquid film are crucial factors affecting on the heat transfer performance of boiling bubbles or slugs. For boiling in micro-channels, the flash evaporation of the liquid film may give rise to boiling instability, and the dry-out of the film leads to serious deterioration of the heat transport. The thin liquid film has multi-scale transitions, and hence the phase change and fluid dynamics need to be solved by special governing equations and numerical algorithm. The numerical studies to date have solved the steady state distribution of the film, but the difficulty consists in the transient simulation of time-variant liquid films. In the present study, unsteady form governing equations are developed. With inclusion of the temporal terms, we conducted transient simulations for flat liquid films formed during the flow boiling in micro-channels. The model predicts the developing of drying spot during growth of elongated bubbles. The results show that the film thickness and distribution change quickly in a growth period, which are functions of the heat flux, mass flow rate and the other parameters. The quantitative assessment of these effects helps to clarify the mechanism of boiling instability and the conditions for the occurrence of critical heat flux (CHF). The simulation needs special numerical scheme for time marching and stabilization treatment for the nonlinear terms, where the numerical accuracy and the significance of the temporal effects are also discussed.


Author(s):  
Yang Cao ◽  
Xuegong Hu ◽  
Dawei Tang ◽  
Chaohong Guo ◽  
Xuelei Nie

In this paper, the characteristics of bubble dynamic behaviors and the impacts on the triple-phase contact line are studied by a visualization investigation. A high-speed digital camera with maximum speed of 30000 frames per second is adopted to record the period of bubble growth and the geometry of the splashed liquid drops. The information of the bubble dynamic behavior and the liquid drops volume can be analyzed through the software MATLAB. The statistics of the splashed liquid drops is adopted under different heat flux conditions. The experimental results show that the bubble dynamic behaviors lead to the fluctuation of the triple-phase contact line and the splashed liquid drops make the heat transfer capability of the film in microgrooves less than its theoretical maximum value. The investigation indicates that the bubble behaviors can influence the performance of heat transfer through the fluctuations of the triple-phase contact line in the thin liquid film in microgrooves. And the splashed liquid drops appearing in boiling process can also affect the heat transfer of the liquid film in open capillary microgrooves.


Author(s):  
Zhenhai Pan ◽  
Justin A. Weibel ◽  
Suresh V. Garimella

High-fidelity simulation of flow boiling in microchannels remains a challenging problem, but the increasing interest in applications of microscale two-phase transport highlight its importance. In this paper, a volume of fluid (VOF)-based flow boiling model is proposed with computational expense-saving features that enable cost-effective simulation of two-phase flow and heat transfer in realistic geometries. The vapor and liquid phases are distinguished using a color function which represents the local volume fraction of the tracked phase. Mass conservation is satisfied by solving the transport equations for both phases with a finite-volume approach. In order to predict phase change at the liquid-vapor interface, evaporative heat and mass source terms are calculated using a novel, saturated-interface-volume phase change model that fixes the interface at the saturation temperature at each time step to achieve stability. Numerical oscillation of the evaporation source terms is thus eliminated and a non-iterative time advancement scheme can be adopted to reduce computational cost. The reference frame is set to move with the vapor slug to artificially increase the local velocity magnitude in the thin liquid film region in the relative frame, which reduces the influence of numerical errors resulting from calculation of the surface tension force, and thus suppresses the development of spurious currents. This allows use of non-uniform meshes that can efficiently resolve high-aspect-ratio geometries and flow features and significantly reduces the overall numerical expense. The proposed model is used to simulate the growth of a vapor bubble in a heated 2D axisymmetric microchannel. The bubble motion, bubble growth rate, liquid film thickness, and local heat transfer coefficient along the wall are compared against previous numerical studies.


2006 ◽  
Vol 129 (5) ◽  
pp. 657-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Basu ◽  
B. M. Cetegen

Flow and heat transfer in a liquid film flowing over the surface of a rotating disk was analyzed by integral technique. The integral analysis includes the prediction of the hydraulic jump and its effects on heat transfer. The results of this analysis are compared to the earlier results that did not include this effect. At low inlet Reynolds numbers and high Rossby numbers, corresponding to low film inertia and low rotation rates, respectively, a hydraulic jump appears on the disk surface. The location of the jump and the liquid film height at this location are predicted. A scaling analysis of the equations governing the film thickness provided a semi-empirical expression for these quantities that was found to be in very good agreement with numerical results. Heat transfer analysis shows that the Nusselt numbers for both constant disk surface temperature and constant disk surface heat flux boundary conditions are lowered in the vicinity of the hydraulic jump due to the thickened liquid film. This effect can be more pronounced for the constant heat flux case depending on the location of the hydraulic jump. The Nusselt number exhibits a turning point at the jump location and can have higher values downstream of the hydraulic jump compared to those obtained from the analysis that does not include the gravitational effects.


2005 ◽  
Vol 128 (3) ◽  
pp. 217-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Basu ◽  
B. M. Cetegen

An integral analysis of hydrodynamics and heat transfer in a thin liquid film flowing over a rotating disk surface is presented for both constant temperature and constant heat flux boundary conditions. The model is found to capture the correct trends of the liquid film thickness variation over the disk surface and compare reasonably well with experimental results over the range of Reynolds and Rossby numbers covering both inertia and rotation dominated regimes. Nusselt number variation over the disk surface shows two types of behavior. At low rotation rates, the Nusselt number exhibits a radial decay with Nusselt number magnitudes increasing with higher inlet Reynolds number for both constant wall temperature and heat flux cases. At high rotation rates, the Nusselt number profiles exhibit a peak whose location advances radially outward with increasing film Reynolds number or inertia. The results also compare favorably with the full numerical simulation results from an earlier study as well as with the reported experimental results.


2018 ◽  
Vol 140 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Li ◽  
Yang Luo ◽  
Jingzhi Zhang ◽  
W. J. Minkowycz

This paper presents fundamental research on the hydrodynamics and heat transfer surrounding a single elongated bubble during flow boiling in a circular microchannel. A continuum surface force (CSF) model based on the volume of fluid (VOF) method is combined with the thermocapillary force to explore the effects of thermocapillarity for flow boiling in microchannels. To validate the self-defined codes, a two-phase thermocapillary-driven flow and a Taylor bubble growing in a capillary tube are studied. Results of both test cases show good convergence and agreement with data from the earlier literature. The bubble motion and the local heat transfer coefficient (HTC) on the heated wall with respect to time are discussed. It is found that for large Marangoni number (case 3), variation of surface tension has affected the bubble shape and temperature profile. The thermocapillary effect induces convection in a thin liquid film region, which augments the HTCs at specified positions. The numerical investigation also shows that the average HTC increased by 6.7% in case 3 when compared with case 1. Thus, it is very important to study further the effects of themocapillarity and the Marangoni effect on bubble growth in microchannels.


Author(s):  
Peilin Cui ◽  
Zhenyu Liu

Abstract This study experimentally investigated the flow boiling of HFE-7100 in wavy copper microchannel heat sink (20 mm × 10 mm), which was fabricated with the ultrafast laser micromachining approach, consisting of 20 wavy microchannels with wavelength of 2000 μm and wave amplitude of 100 μm with triangular cross section (200 μm × 573 μm). The experiment was conducted with the mass fluxes of 330.07–550.11 kg/(m2·s) and heat flux of 14.5–411.3 kW/m2 at an inlet temperature of 15°C. Four flow patterns including bubbly flow, slug flow, churn flow and annular flow were captured with the visualization technique. Several confined bubbles with irregular shape were observed. In the low heat flux region, the dominant flow regime of heat transfer in the microchannels is the nucleate boiling and the heat transfer coefficient increases with increasing heat flux. With the nucleate boiling suppressed gradually, the evaporation of thin liquid film begins to dominate and the heat transfer coefficient decreases with the increase of heat flux. The heat flux has a significant effect on heat transfer coefficient compared with the mass flux and vapor quality.


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