| Understanding the behavior of bubbles in subcooled flow boiling is important for optimum design and safety in several industrial applications. Bubble dynamics involve a complex combination of multiphase flow, heat transfer, and turbulence. When a vapor bubble is nucleated on a vertical heated wall, it typically slides and grows along the wall until it detaches into the bulk liquid. The bubble transfers heat from the wall into the subcooled liquid during this process. Effective control of this transport phenomenon is important for nuclear reactor cooling and requires the study of interfacial heat and mass transfer in a turbulent flow.;Three approaches are commonly used in computational analysis of two-phase flow: Eulerian-Lagrangian, Eulerian-Eulerian, and interface tracking methods. The Eulerian- Lagrangian model assumes a spherical non-deformable bubble in a homogeneous domain. The Eulerian-Eulerian model solves separate conservation equations for each phase using averaging and closure laws. The interface tracking method solves a single set of conservation equations with the interfacial properties computed from the properties of both phases. It is less computationally expensive and does not require empirical relations at the fluid interface. Among the most established interface tracking techniques is the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method. VOF is accurate, conserves mass, captures topology changes, and permits sharp interfaces.;This work involves the behavior of vapor bubbles in upward subcooled flow boiling. Both laminar and turbulent flow conditions are considered with corresponding pipe Reynolds number of 0 -- 410,000 using a large eddy simulation (LES) turbulence model and VOF interface tracking method. The study was performed at operating conditions that cover those of boiling water reactors (BWR) and pressurized water reactors (PWR). The analysis focused on the life cycle of vapor bubble after departing from its nucleation site, i.e. growth, slide, lift-off, rise, condensation, and collapse. The effects of the parametric variations on the bubble dynamics, condensation rate, growth rate, coalescence behavior, distortion, and flow forces were then examined. The effect of microlayer thickness on the rate of heat transfer from the wall to the bubble was also investigated. |
