Initiation of explosive boiling of a droplet with a shock wave

The role of incident shock waves in the initiation of vapor explosions in volatile liquid hydrocarbons has been investigated. Experiments were carried out on single droplets (1–2 mm diameter) immersed in a host fluid and heated to temperatures at or near the limit of superheat. Shocks generated by spark discharge were directed at previously nonevaporating drops as well as at drops boiling stably at high pressure. Explosive boiling is triggered in previously nonevaporating drops only if the drop temperature is above a threshold temperature that is near the superheat limit. Interaction of a shock with a stably boiling drop immediately causes a transition to violent unstable boiling in which fine droplets are torn from the evaporating interface, generating a two-phase flow downstream. On the previously nonevaporating interface between the drop and the host liquid, multiple nucleation sites appear which grow rapidly and coalesce. Overpressures generated in the surrounding fluid during bubble collapse may reach values on the same level as the pressure jump across the shock wave that initiated the explosive boiling. A simple calculation is given, which suggests that shock focusing may influence the location at which unstable boiling is initiated.     

Numerical Analysis of the Impact of Nanofluids and Vapor Grooves Design on the Performance of Capillary Evaporators

This paper discusses the impact of nanofluids and vapor grooves position on the performance of capillary evaporators. The phase change that occurs within the wick structure is simulated using a 2D transient mathematical model. The model combines Darcy’s law, Langmuir’s law, and energy equations to describe the heat and mass transfers inside the wick and the metallic wall. A comparison with experimental visualizations and numerical simulations is proposed. The analysis was performed for water and aluminum oxide nanoparticles with three volume concentrations of nanoparticles. Also, the effect of the vapor grooves configuration on the capillary evaporator performance is studied. The numerical results show that substituting water with nanofluids had a significant effect in reducing the evaporator temperature and the pressure drop in the whole loop. The present work has also shown that the contact between the metallic wall and the wick is an important element that must be taken into account in the design of the evaporator.     

Evaporator critical heat flux in the double-wall artery heat pipe

The fact that heat is transferred into a heat pipe through the liquid-saturated evaporator wick gives rise to the so-called boiling limit on the heat pipe capacity. The composite nature of the double-wall artery heat pipe (DWAHP) wick structure makes the prediction of the evaporator superheat (Δ T_crit) and the critical radial heat flux (q_r) very difficult. The effective thermal conductivity of the wick, the effective radius of critical nucleation cavity, and the nucleation superheat, which are important parameters for double-wall wick evaporator heat transfer, have been evaluated based on the available theoretical models. Empirical correlations are used to corroborate the experimental results of the 2 m DWAHP. A heat choke mounted on the evaporator made it possible to measure the evaporator external temperatures, which were not measured in the previous tests. The high values of the measured evaporator wall temperatures are explainable with the assumption of a thin layer of vapor blanket at the inner heating surface. It has been observed that partial saturation of the wick (lean evaporator) causes the capillary limit to drop even though it may be good for efficient convective heat transfer through the wick. The 2 m long copper-water heat pipe had a peak performance of 1850 W at 23 W/cm² with a horizontal orientation.     

Non-linear effects in a natural circulation evaporator: geysering coupled with manometer oscillations

Investigations at ambient pressure and water for working fluid using a steam-heated single tube natural circulation evaporator revealed a novel type of geysering. This mode appears during start-up of the evaporator and changes to density wave oscillation type I with rising heating steam pressure and decreasing subcooling of the working fluid. The observed operational state is dominated by two interacting phenomena: geysering and manometer oscillations. The periodically appearing geyser feeds kinetic energy into the system whereby the damped manometer oscillation is maintained. Due to manometer oscillations backflow occurs during the incubation phase. Hence, preheated liquid is stored in the feeding line with temperatures greater than the saturation temperature at ambient pressure. This leads to an extreme violent vapour generation and expulsion after onset of the geyser as a result of flashing with maximum mass fluxes 20–60 times higher than the average value. By a moderate increase in pressure drop coefficient of the feeding line, the operational behaviour changes from geysering coupled with manometer oscillation to density wave oscillation type I respectively to a steady mode.     

Start-up investigation on a dual-evaporator MPCL system

This paper describes the start-up process of a space activate thermal control system, two-phase mechanically pumped cooling loop (MPCL) with two evaporators, in ground-based testing. Each evaporator has an outer diameter of 3 mm and a length of 10 m and the total loop of the system is about 40 m. In this paper, the system design and work principle as well as the test setup of an MPCL are presented and the start-up processes of the MPCL are studied. The experiments on the start-up processes under different evaporative temperatures were carried out. Tests attention has been paid to the system performance characteristics such as differential pressure, absolute pressure, mass flow rate, main components temperatures and so on. During the start-up processes, the system presents a good stability and each part of the system performs a reasonable temperature wave, except some superheat phenomena in the evaporator which cause a pressure shock to the system. The superheat is mainly related to evaporative temperature and the initial liquid distribution in the evaporator. In general, the lower the evaporative temperature is the higher superheat occurs. When set-point evaporative temperature is ?15 °C, the differential pressure shock can reach 6.23 bar which is as 7.5 times as the stable state. In conclusion, the MPCL with dual-evaporators can be started up successfully and is an effective kind of thermal control technology for future space applications.     

Two phase flow and heat transfer characteristics of a separate-type heat pipe

Two phase flow and heat transfer characteristics of a separate-type heat pipe have been studied experimentally and theoretically. The experimental apparatus have the same geometry for the evaporator and the condenser which consist of 5-tube-banks, with working temperature ranges of 80–125°C. The experimental working fluid is dual-distilled water with corrosion-resistant agents. Heat transfer coefficients for boiling and condensation along with heat flux and working temperature are measured at different filling ratio. According to the results of the experiments, the optimized filling ratio ranges from 16 to 36%. Fitted correlations of average heat transfer coefficients of the evaporator and Nusselt numbers of the condenser at the proposed filling ratio are obtained. Two phase flow characteristics of the evaporator and the condenser as well as their influence on heat transfer are described on the basis of simplified analysis. Reasons for the pulse-boiling process remain to be studied.     

Combustion in engineering

This is a theoretical study of the diffusive deposition of nucleated fog droplets on a low-pressure steam turbine blade operating between terminal conditions 0.23 bar, 3% wetness and 0.10 bar. Nucleation is assumed to occur at the nozzle passage entrance and fog droplets in the diameter range 0.01–1.00 μm invade both boundary layers in addition to the free stream. Droplets in the boundary layers are subject to diffusion and deposition. If the blade surface temperature is raised by internal heating, the droplets are also subject concurrently to thermophoresis and phase change. The boundary layers were divided into equal cells of size 4 mm flow-wise x 5 μm height-wise and the effects of the coupled phenomena were traced, using a comprehensive computer program, for the complete fluid transit for blade temperatures of 66–85°C. Calculations show that deposition can be inhibited by a modest degree of heating which for 1.0 μm drops is approximately 3 kW per m of blade length.     

Condensation induced water hammer: Numerical prediction

Contact of steam and subcooled water in a pipe or a pressurized vessel leads to intensive condensation accompanied by a pressure drop in the volume of condensing steam and an acceleration of the surrounding water mass towards the steam volume, which can result in a severe water hammer and plant damage. This phenomenon is known as the condensation induced water hammer (CIWH). A one-fluid model is developed for the prediction of pressure surges during CIWH. It is shown that the reliable prediction of pressure surges strongly depends on the calculation of the condensation rate, transient friction and the water column–steam interface tracking. Due to the lack of the CIWH condensation models, a new approach is derived. The one-fluid model predictions of pressure surges are compared with available measured data from a CIWH experimental facility and acceptable agreements are obtained. In addition, the ability of the developed model to simulate the water cannon event, which takes place during the steam drainage into the pool of subcooled water, is demonstrated. Experimentally observed considerable scattering of test data under the same conditions is related to the condensation rate and its dependence on the entrained droplets–steam interfacial area concentration in the vicinity of the water column head.     

Transport of salts and micron-sized particles entrained from a boiling water pool

The entrainment of soluble (KI, CsI) and non-soluble (Al₂O₃) substances through droplets, which are produced by disintegrating steam bubbles at the surface of a boiling water pool, is determined in a pilot-scale facility. Integral measurements are conducted at steady-state conditions in an atmosphere of either pure steam or an air–steam mixture. The ratio of the entrained liquid mass flow and the gas mass flow through the pool, the entrainment factor, is determined for air–steam ratios between 0 and 0.47 kg/kg in the gas atmosphere and at constant total pressures between 2 and 6 bar. The influence of the vertical temperature profile in the gas atmosphere on the convective velocity field is demonstrated by phase Doppler anemometry and particle image velocimetry measurements at a location 2.1 m above the pool surface. The influences of nucleation and natural convection are demonstrated during slow de-pressurization of the facility at rates below 420 Pa/s.     

Theoretical investigation of effects of local cooling of a nozzle divergent section for controlling condensation shock in a supersonic two-phase flow of steam

In supersonic adiabatic two-phase flows of steam, under the influence of supersonic acceleration, the fluid loses its equilibrium conditions and becomes supersaturated. Following this condition and to restore the fluid to equilibrium, micro droplets of water form in the absence of any surface or foreign particles. This phenomenon is called homogeneous nucleation and the formed minute small droplets grow along the fluid flow path. The formation of these droplets and their growth causes the release of the latent heat of evaporation to the gas phase particularly in the nucleation region, and results in an increase in the flow pressure which is called the condensation shock. In this paper, and in continuation of the series of papers by the authors, in addition to analytically solving the adiabatic gas-liquid supersonic flow of steam in a convergent-divergent channel, a novel solution to controlling the undesired effects of this pressure rise (condensation shock) is presented. In the proposed method, with the help of cooling the divergent section of the nozzle, the analytical model for the 1D non-adiabatic two-phase steam flows is further developed which shows considerable decrease in the intensity of the formed condensation shock. Also the growth rate of the formed droplets due to the cooling of the steam flow has higher importance than the nucleation itself.     

A two-fluid model of gas-assisted atomization including flow through the nozzle,phase inversion,and spray dispersion

This paper describes a new approach to modelling compressible gas–liquid flows that undergo change of the continuous phase. The presented model includes the system of the ensemble averaged Navier–Stokes equations together with the particle number density equation for each phase. The constitutive equations that depend on the flow regime are obtained from many sub-models that have been developed alongside the main model. Droplet size is allowed to vary in the flow field but is considered constant within a control volume. Bubbles and droplets break-up and coalescence models are adapted to the flow conditions. The proposed model for atomization treats it as a catastrophic phase inversion that takes place over the surface determined by the local values of phase volume fractions. The model is applied to simulate the premixed air-assisted atomization of water in a nozzle-type device. The computational domain includes the nozzle and the surrounding area of the spray dispersion. The model performance has been verified by comparing the predicted and measured liquid flow rates in the spray as well as the pressure values along the nozzle wall. Computational results are analysed, and the main flow features are presented.     

The influence of matrix viscoelasticity on the rheology of polymer blends

We examine the effects of matrix phase viscoelasticity on the rheological modeling of polymer blends with a droplet morphology. Two contravariant, second-rank tensor variables are adopted along with the translational momentum density of the fluid to account for viscoelasticity of the matrix phase and the ellipsoidal droplet shapes. The first microstructural variable is a conformation tensor describing the average extension and orientation of the molecules in the matrix phase. The other microstructural variable is a configuration tensor to account for the average shape and orientation of constant-volume droplets. A Hamiltonian framework of non-equilibrium thermodynamics is then adopted to derive a set of continuum equations for the system variables. This set of equations accounts for local conformational changes of the matrix molecules due to droplet deformation and vice versa. The model is intended for dilute blends of both oblate and prolate droplets, and droplet breakup and coalescence are not taken into account. Only the matrix phase is considered as viscoelastic; i.e., the droplets are assumed to be Newtonian. The model equations are solved for various types of homogeneous deformations, and microstructure/rheology relationships are discussed for transient and steady-state conditions. A comparison with other constrained-volume rheological models and experimental data is made as well.     

基于电容法的温度对舰船汽轮机油分水性影响研究

依据汽轮机油与水的介电常数差值大,其混合相作为电介质,会发生电容值变化显著的原理,采用同轴圆柱形电容作为测试传感器,选取符合世界主流海军舰船汽轮机油产品规范的8个油样,利用电容法对比研究室温(18~24 ℃)和54 ℃对油样的分水性影响规律,选取了分水性变化明显的油样进行分水后油层微观形貌分析. 试验结果表明:在54 ℃条件下,从油水混合到分离结束,电容值-时间曲线重合度更高,油水均匀混合重复性好,表现出了优于室温的重复性和稳定性;分水速率曲线具有良好的重复性,验证了电容法评定汽轮机油分水性的可靠性,在相同温度下分水速率和破乳化时间受水相分布与运动态势影响小;确定用电容法评定汽轮机油分水性时,环境温度选择54 ℃为最佳;作用机理分析说明,温度是影响舰船汽轮机油分水性的关键指标.      

Modeling for heat and mass transfer with phase change in porous wick of CPL evaporator

A mathematic model is developed to describe heat and mass transfer with phase change in the porous wick of evaporator of capillary pumped loop (CPL). This model with six field variables, including temperature, liquid content, pressure, liquid velocity, vapor velocity and phase-change rate, is closed mathematically with additional pressure relationships introduced. The present model is suitable to the numerical computation, as the established equations become comparatively easy to solve, which is applied to CPL evaporator. The numerical results are obtained and the parameter effects on evaporator are discussed. The study demonstrates that instead of an evaporative interface, there exists an unsaturated two-phase zone between the vapor-saturated zone and the liquid-saturated zone in the wick of CPL evaporator.     

Modeling of simultaneous heat and mass transfer processes in ammonia–water absorption systems from general correlations

This paper presents a general differential mathematical model to analyze the simultaneous heat and mass transfer processes that occur in different components of an ammonia–water absorption system: absorber, desorber, rectifier, distillation column, condenser and evaporator. Heat and mass transfer equations are considered, taking into account the heat and mass transfer resistances in the liquid and vapour phases. The model considers the different regions: vapour phase, liquid phase and an external heating or cooling medium. A finite difference numerical method has been considered to solve the resulting set of nonlinear differential equations and an iterative algorithm is proposed for its solution. A map of possible solutions of the mass transferred composition z is presented when varying the interface temperature, which enables to establish a robust implementation code. The analysis is focused on the processes presented in ammonia–water absorption systems. The model is applied to analyze the ammonia purification process in an adiabatic packed rectification column and the numerical results show good agreement with experimental data.     

An icing physics study by using lifetime-based molecular tagging thermometry technique

An experimental investigation was conducted to quantify the unsteady heat transfer and phase changing process within small icing water droplets in order to elucidate underlying physics to improve our understanding of the important micro-physical process of icing phenomena. A novel, lifetime-based molecular tagging thermometry (MTT) technique was developed and implemented to achieve temporally-and-spatially resolved temperature distribution measurements to reveal the time evolution of the unsteady heat transfer and dynamic phase changing process within micro-sized water droplets in the course of icing process. It was found that, after a water droplet impinged onto a frozen cold surface, the liquid water at the bottom of the droplet would be frozen and turned to solid ice rapidly, while the upper portion of the droplet was still in liquid state. As the time goes by, the interface between the liquid phase water and solid phase ice was found to move upward continuously with more and more liquid water within the droplet turned to solid ice. Interestingly, the averaged temperature of the remaining liquid water within the small icing droplet was found to increase, rather than decrease, continuously in the course of icing process. The temperature increase of the remaining liquid water is believed to be due to the heat release of the latent heat during solidification process. The volume expansion of the water droplet during the icing process was found to be mainly upward to cause droplet height growth rather than radial to enlarge the contact area of the droplet on the test plate. As a result, the spherical-cap-shaped water droplet was found to turn to a prolate-spheroid-shaped ice crystal with cusp-like top at the end of the icing process. The required freezing time for the water droplets to turn to ice crystals completely was found to depend on the surface temperature of the test plate strongly, which would decrease exponentially as the surface temperature of the frozen cold test plate decreases.     

Drop impact on a hot surface: effect of a polymer additive

The impact of a drop on a hot surface is studied for Weber numbers between 20 and 220, and wall temperatures between 120 and 180°C. Drops of pure water are compared with drops of a dilute polyethylene oxide water solution (0.02% M). The additive is shown to inhibit drop splashing, the ejection of secondary droplets and mist formation. As previously observed, the polymer can also prevent drops from bouncing off a cold wall. This is no longer true if the wall is above the dynamic Leidenfrost temperature, which is lower for the polymer solution.     

An equation set for non-equilibrium two phase flow,and an analysis of some aspects of choking,acoustic propagation,and losses in low pressure wet steam

An equation set for multidimensional, time variant, inviscid flow of a condensing vapour is presented. The equations include the effects of relative motion between the primary gas phase and the suspended liquid droplets. They have been formulated with steam turbine applications in mind but are also relevant to problems of gas-particle and liquid bubble flow.It is shown that the critical velocity in one dimensional choking of low pressure wet steam is identical with the “frozen” speed of acoustic propagation, and the variation of choking mass flow with respect to equilibrium based calculations is described. Results obtained with two different models of droplet growth are compared, and simple formulae for calculating limiting values of choking flow are given. A generalised loss coefficient including the effects of thermodynamic and kinematic non-equilibrium is introduced.     

液滴热毛细迁移问题的研究进展

液滴或气泡的迁移现象无论是在流体力学的基础研究中,还是在材料加工,化学工程等实际应用中都是一个很重要的课题。在微重力环境中,如果在液滴或气泡所在的母液中外加一个温度场,则液滴或气泡就会由于表面张力分布的不均匀而发生迁移运动。这种运动被称为Marangoni迁移或热毛细迁移运动。本文综述了液滴或气泡的热毛细迁移问题历史研究中理论分析,数值模拟以及实验方面的主要结果,阐述了该问题的研究发展过程。目前液滴迁移问题的研究状况,理论分析解还只限于线性及弱非线性的定常问题,数值模拟工作已经得到了在热对流作用比较小的时候液滴的非定常迁移过程,但是对于热对流影响很大的情况(Marangoni数大于100)则尚未得到过与实验中观测到的相一致的理论结果。本文在总结前人研究的基础上,同时给出了在对于热对流作用较大时液滴热毛细迁移非定常问题的最新的数值模拟的结果,并对该问题在此情况下产生的新的变化也给予了分析。最后,文中分析了当前研究中所存在的问题并进一步展望了液滴热毛细迁移问题在未来的发展方向。      

Heat transfer and two-phase flow characteristics of refrigerants flowing under varied heat flux in a double-pipe evaporator

A mathematical model based on the annular flow pattern is developed to simulate the evaporation of refrigerants flowing under varied heat flux in a double tube evaporator. The finite difference form of governing equations of this present model is derived from the conservation of mass, energy and momentum. The experimental set-up is designed and constructed to provide the experimental data for verifying the simulation results. The test section is a 2.5 m long counterflow double tube heat exchanger with a refrigerant flowing in the inner tube and heating water flowing in the annulus. The inner tube is made from smooth horizontal copper tubing of 9.53 mm outer diameter and 7.1 mm inner diameter. The agreement of the model with the experimental data is satisfactory. The present model can be used to investigate the axial distributions of the temperature, heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop of various refrigerants. Moreover, the evaporation rate or the other relevant parameters that is difficult to measure in the experiment are predicted and presented here. The results from the present mathematical model show that the saturation pressure and temperature of refrigerant decrease along the tube due to the tube wall friction and the flow acceleration of refrigerant. The liquid heat transfer coefficient increases with the axial length due to reducing the thickness of the liquid refrigerant film. Due to increase of the liquid heat transfer coefficient, increasing wall heat flux is obtained.Finally, the evaporation rate of refrigerant increases with increasing wall heat flux.