CFD-Simulation of Film Boiling at Steel Cooling Process

Abstract

Abstract This paper analyzes film boiling phenomena on a flat, horizontal hot steel plate using the volume of fluid method. The influence of water delivery velocity and plate surface temperature on film boiling behaviour has been quantified for the case of a single laminar flow jet assuming two-dimensional radial symmetry. In the present study, the model includes both convection and radiation induced mass and heat transfer, where the latter was found to be more important to maintain the film layer and film boiling at high temperatures. The model estimated heat and mass transfer behaviours at impingement velocities between 1 and 5 m/s and temperatures between 500 and 1300 K were found to be qualitatively consistent with available literature. The initial results obtained with the simulation suggest that computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation techniques represent a promising alternative for studying complex and difficult to measure phenomena such as high temperature film boiling, and hint at a new class of experimental methods for mechanistic analysis of fluid mechanical and thermal processes using purely computational methods.