Two-phase Eulerian model for nucleate subcooled boiling
 

Hi Foamers,

I want to model nucleate boiling using a Eulerian-Eulerian approach (no interface tracking or level set method but derivation of mass, momentum and energy conservation equations for both liquid and vapor phase).

Basically my geometry is a 2D semi-channel in the plane (x,y)
* x=0-axis corresponds to the centerline of the real channel (bulk coolant)
* x=xmax corresponds to the heated wall
* water is flowing along the y-axis

Physically speaking, part of the water will boil in the vicinity of the heated wall, and formed bubbles will subsequently move towards the center of the real channel, i.e towards x=0 and condensate due to the contact with the surrounding subcooled water. In this model, one assumes that the whole heat given by the wall is given to the liquid phase. The vapor phase can only gain energy through evaporation of water.

I started from the twoPhaseEulerFoam solver, and I implemented interfacial forces for drag, lift, virtual mass, turbulent dispersion, wall lubrication. In a first time, I just modeled the condensation of bubbles, assuming that at the inlet, there is some void and these bubbles are condensing while flowing along the channel. BUT FOR THE MOMENT NO HEAT WAS SUPPLY TO THE WALL, so no evaporation was considered. The results were quite satisfying.

Now i want to go one step further and add in my model the evaporation of water close to the wall. Before developing a more complicated boiling model, I tried something very simple. I just took a constant evaporation rate that I applied to the cells in contact with the wall. Then in my momentum and energy equations, I took into account both the variations due to condensation and evaporation, as well as the heat supplied by the wall to the liquid phase in contact with the wall.

However, my simulations crashed very quickly and I get this error message:


It seems that my velocity fields for both phases is diverging. My UEqn for the gas phase looks like that (similar for liquid phase):

Do you have any idea what could be wrong?
If you need more details, don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks in advance!

/Ed

Hi Edy, I am also doing the simulation on two-phase flow with phase change using Euler-Euler model. But you are way ahead of me. This time I am struggling at the stage without considering the mass and heat transfer.

Back to your question, I think you need to add a source term to the pressure equation considering the condensation or evaporation. Hope this can help you.

Best regards,
Chiven

Hi Chiven,

Thanks for your reply.
Your answer is actually very helpful, i'll dig deeper in this p-Eqn and try to see which term to add. With condensation only, I kept the pEqn unchanged and it worked. But my evaporation rate is much bigger and it might cause some problems.

I'll check this issue next week cause I found out mistakes in my interfacial forces implementation that I need to solve first.

If you have questions while developing your model, dont hesitate to ask, perhaps I will have encountered the same problem before.

Thanks again.
Best

/Ed

Hi
maybe its better to see master thesis of Edouard Michta (Modeling of Subcooled Nucleate Boiling with OpenFOAM)

Hi Mr.ramzani,
I've read that thesis and i think it's suitable for my work. But i couldn't find his solver on the net.
Do you have it? Or do you know how can i get it?

Thanks in advance,

It is not the Michta's solver discussed above, but you may wan't to look at reactingTwoPhaseEulerFoam of recent OpenFOAM releases (3.1 and newer).

You can currently find two subcooled nucleate boiling tutorials in OpenFOAM-dev:

Constant bubble diameter: https://github.com/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM...AS/wallBoiling

With IATE diameterModel: https://github.com/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM...allBoilingIATE