Conjugate Heat Transfer Coupling for Interface Capturing Simulation of Boiling Phenomena

Onset of film boiling is a very interesting and complex process, particularly for industrial applications such as chemical processing and energy production. To better understand this process, both high resolution experiments and simulations are valuable tools for research. However, very few flow solvers exist capable of large-scale simulations in complex domains. A good candidate for such work is the massively parallel multiphase CFD flow solver PHASTA which has been shown to perform wide variety of adiabatic interface capturing simulations in the past. Additional capabilities must be added to handle the film boiling phenomenon. The focus of the presented research is to develop and implement the Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT) capabilities within the solver to be coupled with the Parallel Lattice Algorithm for Interphase Dynamics (PLAID) approach which is undergoing verification. A pool boiling simulation is presented intending to emulate the conditions of transition boiling, or surpassing critical heat flux, the simulation seeds multiple bubble nucleation sites on a wall with a transient, linearly varying heat flux applied to the wall. The major focus areas of the study are the implementation of CHT and its coupling with PLAID to deliver a reasonable result, though both algorithms are not mature enough to claim true accuracy. Limited testing of the CHT accuracy is performed and careful inspection of the behavior of both algorithms is described.