Boiling heat transfer and stability problems. Final report, November 1, 1976--March 31, 1979

Abstract

Substantial progress has been made in two areas relating to the boiling heat transfer: the stability of a vapor-liquid system and the dynamics of bubbles. For the stability problem, a simplified formulation retaining the essential feature of the interfacial mass transfer has been established for the complex interfacial stability problem with mass and heat transfer. The simplified version was first applied to the linear Rayleigh-Taylor and Kelvin--Helmholtz stability problems. General agreement with results from previous more comprehensive treatment is obtained. Then the simplified formulation is utilized to study the nonlinear Rayleigh-Taylor stability problem. It is found that the combined effects of finite amplitude and the heat and mass transfer can stabilize the system in a regime which is linearly unstable. A single non-dimensional parameter can be found to characterize the stability criterion for certain configuration relevant to the problem of boiling heat transfer. For the problem of bubble dynamics, the investigation of the nonlinear coupling between the subharmonic spherical oscillation and the nonspherical oscillation has been carried out.