Two-phase flow and heat transfer on a cylinder via low-velocity jet impact

Abstract

Combining the benefits of jet impact and phase-transition heat transfer, jet impact boiling has been widely adopted in industrial scenarios. Notably, owing to limitations of high-velocity jets, such as high impact stress and pumping pressure in liquid circuits, low-velocity jet impacting deserves more attention and explorations. In this paper, under an atmospheric environment with wall heating temperatures ranging from 36 °C to 128 °C, the two-phase flow and heat transfer characteristics (local surface temperature, boiling curves and liquid loss rate) of low-velocity jet impacting on a cylindrical surface are investigated by experiment, followed by the analysis on the effects of jet outlet velocity and impact height. The findings reveal that, with the increase of heat transfer rate, the heat transfer regimes in sequence are non-phase transition (single-phase convection and air-liquid two-phase convection) and nucleate boiling. The influences of jet impact height and outlet velocity on local surface temperatures are pronounced at non-phase transition stage. In impact region, along with average superheat, the growth rates of heat transfer rate and liquid loss rate increase significantly from non-phase transition to nucleate boiling stage, and slow down at anaphase of nucleate boiling stage. Interestingly, the increase in outlet velocity delays the onset of slowdown in growth of liquid loss rate to some extent. Overall, the heat transfer rate and liquid loss rate are significantly enhanced at higher jet outlet velocity of 0.60 m/s, but not affected significantly by impact height.