Search

Evaporation and condensation phenomena play a significant role in many of the nuclear, biochemical, and thermal processes in industrial applications. It is a complicated phenomenon as it undergoes both heat and mass transfer processes along with the complexities involved in the interfacial regions of vapor and liquid phases. Several experimental works have been carried out in the recent past to understand the condensation process in detail. However, understanding the phenomenon using computational technique is more advantageous as the interfacial mass transfer between gas and liquid can be modelled accurately. In the present work, condensation of a saturated vapor bubble in the sub-cooled liquid is studied, and various factors that influence the bubble shape change and the bubble lifetime, are evaluated. The analysis is carried out using the ‘Multi-Fluid Volume of Fluid’ and ‘Thermal Phase Change’ (TPC) models implemented in ANSYS Fluent commercial CFD solver. A detailed study is performed to obtain the best approach for calculating interfacial area density using a ‘user-defined function’ (UDF), and the advantage of the node-based gradient calculation method is exhibited. The numerical results obtained for the history of bubble shape and bubble lifetime are validated against the experiment and previously published works with good accuracy. The paper also elaborates on how the initial bubble diameter, the subcooling temperature, and the system pressure affects the shape and lifetime of the bubble during the condensation process. Godkänd;2021;Nivå 0;2021-02-16 (johcin)

Cavitation occurs in a wide range of applications, such as in marine propellers, diesel injectors, supercavitating projectiles, etc. Currently, the available cavitation models rely on expressions derived from inertial bubble growth models and fine-tuned using a few experiments. Revisiting the literature on bubble growth models indicates that there is scope for improvement in the bubble growth expressions presently employed. The previous studies in this subject have assumed that the vapor in the bubble remains saturated. Detailed numerical studies using one-dimensional saturated vapor model reveals over-prediction of the bubble radius when compared with a wide range of experimental data. To overcome this, a coupled mass, momentum, and energy model, termed full model, is then developed and the analysis suggests that this model gives good agreement over the entire experimental data. Parametric studies carried out to generate non-dimensional bubble growth rate expressions indicate that the growth rate climbs linearly on a log –log plot during initial stages of bubble growth which is function Jakob number J a and finally settles into an asymptotic non-linear curve which is independent of J a. The bubble growth rate expressions when integrated to obtain bubble radius as function of time is able to predict the experimental data with mean relative error of 1.2% and root mean square relative error of 8% for J a varying from 13.53 to 2745.

To predict nucleate boiling, a novel semimechanistic wall boiling model is developed within a mixture multiphase flow framework available in ansys fluent. The mass transfer phenomenon is modeled using an evaporation–condensation model, and enhancement of wall-to-fluid heat transfer due to nucleate boiling is captured using a 1D empirical correlation, modified for 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) environment; hence this model can be used for a complex-shaped coolant passage. For a series of operating conditions, the present model is rigorously validated against available experimental data in which a 50% volume mixture of aqueous ethylene glycol was used as coolant. Subsequently, this model is applied to study boiling heat transfer for a typical automobile exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) cooler under a typical condition.

Open window buses without air-conditioning are a major mode of urban and inter-city transport in most countries. High occupancy combined with hot and humid conditions makes travel in these buses quite uncomfortable. In this study air flow through a bus has been studied that could be the basis for low cost and eco-friendly methods of increasing passenger comfort and possibly reduce drag. The aerodynamics of such a road vehicle has not been studied as previous investigations have been confined to vehicles with closed windows that present a smooth exterior to air flow. Using a 1:25 scaled Perspex model of an urban bus in Delhi, flow visualization was performed in a water channel. The Reynolds numbers were one-tenth of a real bus moving at 10 m/s. Smoke and tuft visualizations were also performed on an urban bus at 40 km/h. Numerical simulations were performed at the actual Reynolds number. Even though there were Reynolds number differences, the broad features were similar. Air enters the bus from the rear windows, moves to the front (relative to the bus) and exits from the front windows. Inside air velocity relative to the bus is about one-tenth of the free-stream velocity. The flow is highly three-dimensional and unsteady.

The growing awareness of pollutant emissions from gas turbines has made it very important to study fuel atomization system, the spray wall interaction and hydrodynamic of film formed on engine walls. A precise fuel spray spatial distribution and efficient fuel air mixing plays important role in improving combustion performance. Cross-flow injection and film atomization technique has been studied extensively for gas turbine engines to achieve efficient combustion. Air blast atomizer is one of these kind of systems used in gas turbine engines which involves shear driven prefilmer secondary atomization. In addition to gas turbine combustor shear driven liquid wall film can be seen in IC engines, rocket nozzles, heat exchangers and also on steam turbine blades. In our work we have used Eulerian Wall Film (EWF) [1] model to simulate the experiment performed by Arienti et al. [2]. In the Arienti’s experiment liquid jet is injected from a nozzle from the top of the chamber. Droplets shed from the jet surface due to primary and later secondary atomization in the presence of high shearing cross flowing air. Further liquid fuel particles hit the wall to form film, film moves subjected to shear from the gas phase. Liquid film can reatomizes due to subgrid processes like stripping, splashing and film breakup. In current study we have validated Arienti et al. [2] experimental data by modeling complex & coupled physics of spray, film and continuous phase and by accounting complex subgrid processes.

The present paper concerns the development and validation of an Eulerian multiphase boiling model to predict boiling and critical heat flux within the general-purpose computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver FLUENT. The governing equations solved are generalized phase continuity, momentum and energy equations. Turbulence effects are accounted for using mixture, dispersed or per-phase multiphase turbulence models. Wall boiling phenomena are modeled using the baseline mechanistic nucleate boiling model, developed in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Modifications have been introduced to the quenching heat flux model to achieve mesh-independent solutions. The influences of boiling model parameters have also been systematically investigated. To model non-equilibrium boiling and critical heat flux, the PRI model is extended to the departure from nucleate boiling (DNB) by partitioning wall heat flux to both liquid and vapor phases and considering the existence of thin liquid wall film. Topological functions are introduced to consider the wall boiling regime transition from the nucleate boiling to critical heat flux (CHF), and the corresponding flow regime change from bubbly flows to mist flows. A range of sub-models are implemented to model the interfacial momentum, mass and heat transfer and turbulence-bubble interactions. To validate the Eulerian multiphase boiling model, it has been used to predict nucleating boiling and critical heat flux in a range of 2D and 3D boiling flows. The examples presented in the paper include: (1). Nucleate boiling of sub-cooled water in an upward heated pipe; (2) R113 liquid flows through a vertical annulus with internal heated walls; (3). 3D boiling flows in a rectangular-sectioned duct; and (4). Critical heat flux and post dryout in vertical pipes. The results demonstrate that the model is able to predict reasonably well the distributions of wall temperature, the bulk fluid sub-cooling temperature and cross-sectional averaged vapor volume fraction in the vertical pipe. The computed profiles of the vapor volume fraction, liquid temperature, and the liquid and vapor velocity profiles are generally in good agreement with available experiments in the 2D annular case. In the 3D rectangular duct, the cross-sectional averaged vapor volume fractions are well captured in all the ten cases under investigation. In the case of critical heat flux and post dryout, the model is also able to predict reasonably well the location and the temperature rise under critical heat flux conditions. The computed wall temperature distributions along the pipes are in overall good agreement with available experiments.Copyright © 2011 by ASME