Experimental investigation on bubble dynamics and boiling heat transfer for saturated pool boiling and comparison data with previous works

Abstract

This paper experimentally investigates the boiling heat transfer capability and the bubble dynamic characteristics for the saturated pool boiling through thermocouple measurement and high-speed camera observation. The bubble dynamics include the bubble departure diameter, the bubble departure frequency, and the nucleation site density. The boiling curve for the pool boiling is also obtained. Applicability of the boiling heat transfer models in the thermal industries strongly relies on the appropriate correlations for these bubble dynamic parameters. In this paper, the correlations for the bubble departure diameter/departure frequency, the nucleation site density, and the boiling curve have been assessed with the present measurements. The data from the previous works are also compared to demonstrate reasonability of the present results. Using the least-square-method, the relationship of bubble dynamics with the wall superheat can be regressed. Comparison of the boiling curves between the measurements and predictions are also presented. The predicted boiling curve is obtained from the wall heat flux partitioning model with the input of the regressed equations for the bubble dynamics. The agreement reveals that the present boiling curve and bubble dynamics can provide the useful information for validation of CFD two-phase and boiling heat transfer models, which is one of main contributions from the present work.