Film boiling on spheres in single- and two-phase flows.

Abstract

Film boiling on spheres in single- and two-phase flows was studied experimentally and theoretically with an emphasis on establishing the film boiling heat transfer closure law, which is useful in the analysis of nuclear reactor core melt accidents. Systematic experimentation of film boiling on spheres in single-phase water flows was carried out to investigate the effects of liquid subcooling (from 0 to 40 C), liquid velocity (from 0 to 2 m/s), sphere superheat (from 200 to 900 C), sphere diameter (from 6 to 19 mm), and sphere material (stainless steel and brass) on film boiling heat transfer. Based on the experimental data a general film boiling heat transfer correlation is developed. Utilizing a two-phase laminar boundary-layer model for the unseparated front film region and a turbulent eddy model for the separated rear region, a theoretical model was developed to predict the film boiling heat transfer in all single-phase regimes. The film boiling from a sphere in two-phase flows was investigated both in upward two-phase flows (with void fraction from 0.2 to 0.65, water velocity from 0.6 to 3.2 m/s, and steam velocity from 3.0 to 9.0 m/s) and in downward two-phase flows (with void fraction from 0.7 to 0.95, water velocity from 1.9 to 6.5 m/s, and steam velocity from 1.1 to 9.0 m/s). The saturated single-phase heat transfer correlation was found to be applicable to the two-phase film boiling data by making use of the actual water velocity (water phase velocity), and an adjustment factor of (1 - {alpha}){sup 1/4} (with a being the void fraction) for downward flow case only. Slight adjustments of the Reynolds number exponents in the correlation provided an even better interpretation of the two-phase data. Preliminary experiments were also conducted to address the influences of multi-sphere structure on the film boiling heat transfer in single- and two-phase flows.