Nucleation and flashing in nozzles—2. Comparison with experiments using a five-equation model for vapor void development

Abstract

A quasi-one-dimensional, five-equation, homogeneous, nonequilibrium model has been developed and utilized on a microcomputer to calculate the behavior of flowing, initially subcooled, flashing water systems. Equations for mixture and vapor mass conservation, mixture momentum conservation, liquid energy conservation and bubble transport were discretized and linearized semi-implicitly, and solved using a successive iteration Newton method. Closure was obtained through simple constitutive equations for friction and spherical bubble growth, and a new nucleation model for wall nucleation in small nozzles combined with an existing model for bulk nucleation in large geometries to obtain the thermal nonequilibrium between phases. The model described was applied to choked nozzle flow with subcooled water inlets based on specified inlet conditions of pressure and temperature, and vanishing inlet void fraction and bubble number density. Good qualitative and quantitative agreement with the experiment confirms the adequacy of the nucleation models in determining both the initial size and number density of nuclei, and indicates that mechanical nonequilibrium between phases is not an important factor in these flows. It is shown that bulk nucleation becomes important as the volume-to-surface ratio of the geometry is increased.