Direct Simulation of Spray Cooling: Effect of Multiple Droplet Impact and Latent Heat of Vaporization of Coolant Liquid on Heat Transfer

Abstract

Spray cooling is a way of efficiently removing the heat from a hot surface and considered for high power system such as advanced lasers. The heat transfer phenomenon in spray cooling is complex in nature because it occurs due to conduction, convection and phase change. The numerical model of spray cooling is done by solving the set of incompressible Navier-Stokes equations using finite difference method. Level set method is used to capture the liquid vapor interface in our multiphase flow model. Our previous 2D model which included single droplet impact on single growing vapor bubble is modified to introduce multiple droplets impact on thin liquid film with multiple growing vapor bubbles. Though the previous model was effective so far to predict the spray cooling phenomena and also the parameters for high heat removal, but the actual spray cooling phenomena consists of multiple droplets impact on multiple growing vapor bubbles at different time instances. To understand the spray cooling further and to represent it more realistically the inclusion of multiple droplets and multiple vapor bubbles is essential. In the present work, an investigation on the effect of latent heat of vaporization of coolant is conducted for the case of a thin liquid film of 44 μm in removing the heat and bubble growth when a liquid spray droplet is impacting. The flow and heat transfer details are presented for multiple droplet impacts on thin liquid film with multiple growing vapor bubbles.