Experiment study on film width and thickness of free falling water film on a large inclined plate

Abstract

An experiment was setup to study film width and film thickness of a free falling water film on a large inclined steel plate with no heat transfer. Based on results a semi-empirical correlation was developed to predict the film width and film thickness for partially film-covered condition, and the prediction of the film width was in agreement, to within ±20%, with the experiment results. And different film thickness correlations were examined with experiment data under fully film-covered condition, and it showed that at lower Reynolds the Nusselt theory predicted the average film thickness well and at higher Reynolds the Lel correlation predicted better. The transition region of Reynolds between these two was related to the measuring location relative to the liquid inlet.