Author : Harikrishnan G, Ebin P S and Jayakumar J S

Subcooled flow boiling in vertical channels have many industrial applications, including heat removal from core of nuclears. In the present work, subcooled flow boiling is simulated using open source simulation software OpenFOAM. A new solver is developed based on the OpenFOAM framework to predict subcooled flow boiling by incorporating various flow boiling models. Vapor generation in the heated wall is modeled with a wall heat flux partitioning model. Additional source terms are added to the governing equations to account for the phase change process. Energy equation is implemented for the liquid phase. The solver is validated against benchmark calculation of the DEBORA subcooled boiling data.

Keywords: subcooled boiling, CFD, VOF, OpenFOAM, bubbleFoam, Numerical

Article published in International Conference on Advances in Mechanical Sciences 2014, Special Issue-2 (Feb 2014)