Numerical Simulation of Transient Conjugate Heat Transfer in Liquid Jet Impingement

Abstract

Numerical simulation is performed for a quenching process in liquid jet impingement, which is applicable to thermal control in metal manufacturing and emergency cooling of nuclear reactors. The flow and cooling characteristics of jet impingement are investigated by solving the conservation equations of mass, momentum and energy in the liquid and gas phases. The liquid-vapor and liquid-air interfaces are tracked by a sharp-interface level-set method which is modified to include the effect of phase change at the liquid-vapor interface. The temporal and spatial variation of solid temperature is analyzed by solving a conjugate problem with the conduction in the solid as well as the convection in the liquid and gas phases. The numerical results demonstrate that the temporal variations of the temperature and heat flux near the fluid-solid interface are very steep compared to those inside the solid. The heat flux variations at the fluid-solid interface are observed to be much larger in the convection mode than in the film boiling mode. The solid temperatures and heat fluxes obtained from the present study are compared with the experimental data reported in the literature.