Heat flux effect on the droplet entrainment and deposition in annular flow dryout

Abstract

This paper discusses the internal mass transfer process in annular flow dryout. The emphasis is put on the order of magnitude estimation of respective hydrodynamic and thermal mechanisms and the analysis of the heat flux effect on droplet entrainment and deposition. A simple interfacial turbulence model is developed to characterize the turbulence intensity suppression due to interface tension. The heat flux effect on droplet entrainment depends on the competition between the shear force decrease due to vapor effusion and the bubble emission: in low flow condition, the bubble emission outweighs the shear force decrease, thus the net effect is to increase the droplet entrainment; in high flow condition, the situation may reverse. The heat flux impact on droplet deposition is significant only for very fine droplets (less than 1μm) because of the coupled effect of interface turbulence damping and the radial vapor effusion due to evaporation, but for droplets of medium and large sizes the heat flux effect is negligible. The analysis is then used to develop constitutive equations for droplet entrainment and deposition rates to take into account the interaction between thermal and hydrodynamic mechanisms, which gives improved CHF prediction for limiting quality regime (LQR) CHF experimental data.