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Sambhaji T. Kadam
of Bubble Growth at Nucleation
Mechanical Engineering Department,
Indian Institute of Technology Indore,
Madhya Pradesh 453446, India
Site in Microchannels
Formation of the first bubble at nucleation site is an inception of the two phase flow in
Kuldeep Baghel pool boiling and flow boiling. Bubble dynamics (bubble nucleation, growth, and depar-
Mechanical Engineering Department, ture) plays an important role in heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics during
Indian Institute of Technology Indore, two phase flow in microchannels. In this paper, a simplified model has been developed
Madhya Pradesh 453446, India for predicting bubble growth rate at nucleation cavity in microchannel. It is assumed that
heat supplied at nucleation site is divided between the liquid phase and the vapor phase
Ritunesh Kumar1 as per instantaneous void fraction value. The energy consumed by the vapor phase is uti-
Mechanical Engineering Department, lized in bubble growth and overcoming resistive effects; surface tension, inertia, shear,
Indian Institute of Technology Indore, gravity, and change in momentum due to evaporation. Proposed model shows a good
Madhya Pradesh 453446, India agreement with available experimental works. In addition, the bubble waiting time phe-
e-mail: ritunesh@iiti.ac.in nomenon for flow boiling is also addressed using proposed model. Waiting time predicted
by the model is also close to that obtained from experimental data.
[DOI: 10.1115/1.4026609]
Keywords: bubble growth, flow boiling, microchannels, nucleation site, waiting time
Energy Utilization in Vapor Bubble. In this section, energy (e) Energy required to overcome the gravity (buoyancy) effect
required for bubble growth and consumed in overcoming other (Erg):
resistive effects are discussed. The effect of gravity (buoyancy) is due to density differ-
ence between liquid and vapor phase. Energy required to
(a) Energy required for the bubble growth (Ebubble):
overcome the gravity (buoyancy) effect is given by the fol-
Evaporation is an endothermic phase change process in
lowing equation:
which significant amount of heat supplied to the vapor
phase is consumed during bubble growth period. Due to dVi
evaporation at the interface, vapor is added into the bubble, Erg gql qv a (11)
thus bubble volume continuously increases at the nuclea- dt
tion site since inception until its departure. The energy (f) Energy required to overcome the force due change in evap-
required for evaporation at the liquidvapor interface is oration momentum (Erm):
given by the following equation: Evaporation at the interface results in a force due to change
in momentum as vapor leaves the interface [2932]. The
dVi force due change in momentum due to evaporation is given
Ebubble qv hfg (4) by the following equation:
dt
(b) Energy required to overcome the surface tension effect at q00 q00
Fm Ai;s (12)
interface (Ersf): hfg hfg qv
Surface free energy at the interface continuously increases
with time due to increase in surface area of the bubble dur-
ing growth period. Surface tension can be expressed in Thus, energy required to overcome this effect is computed by
terms of the Gibbs energy and surface area utilizing the multiplying the force due to change in evaporation momentum
following equation [46,47]: with bubble growth rate as shown in the following equation:
q00 q00 dr
dG Erm Ai;s (13)
r (5) hfg hfg qv dt
dAi;s
The instantaneous volume (Vi), surface area (Ai,s), cross-
Rearranging the above equation gives the surface energy sectional area (Ai,c/s), and centroid (a) of the bubble are derived in
required to maintain the interface. It is shown in final form terms of contact angle and bubble radius. The shape of the bubble
by the following equation: is assumed as a truncated sphere as shown in Fig. 2. Instantaneous
volume, surface area, and cross-sectional area of the bubble are
dAi;s given by Eqs. (14), (15), and (16), respectively.
Ersf r (6)
dt
p 3
Vi r a (14)
(c) Energy required to overcome the inertia effect (Eri): 3
Inertia force acting over the bubble is given by the follow-
Ai;s p r 2 b (15)
ing equation [31,32,48]:
1
Ai;c=s r2 c (16)
G2 2
Fi Ai;c=s (7)
ql
where, a, c, and b are given by Eq. (17)(19).
Energy required to overcome the inertia effect is calculated h n oi
by multiplying the inertia force with bubble growth rate as a 4 0:5 31 cos h sin2 h 1 cos h3 (17)
shown in the following equation:
h n oi
2
b 4 sin2 h 1 cos h2 (18)
: dr G dr
Eri Fi growth rate ql Ai;c=s v2 Ai;c=s (8)
dt ql dt 2ph
c 2p sin 2h (19)
180
(d) Energy required to overcome the shear effect (Ersh):
Flowing fluid exerts the shear force on the bubble. Only
half portion of vapor bubble is directly exposed to the
flowing fluid and it experiences the shear force. Effect of
the shear force on downstream direction is neglected due
to the formation of eddies, which creates flow separation
in downward direction. The shear force acting over the
bubble is given by the following equation [31,32]:
G Ai;s
Fsh l (9)
2ql r 2
w 2180 h (21)
2 3
w
4sin3
6 2 w 7
/6
43w sin w sin 90 2 5
7 (22)
Substituting Eq. (3), (4), (6), (8), (10), (11), (13)(16) into the
Eq. (2), the bubble growth rate is given by the following equation:
" 00 2 # Fig. 3 Comparison of present model with Liui et al. [21]
Ac c 2 dr G2 q pb
q00 r r2 p a qv hfg c
Ach 2 dt 2ql hfg qv empirical relation (Eq. (26)) has been developed in order to find
out contact angle variation during the bubble growth in terms of
dr G
r r 2 p b l pb surface tension (r) and time (t), following experimental work of
dt 4 ql
Ref. [21].
dr pa/
r3 gql qv (23) h hincep 13:794 ln t 2:31 ln r (26)
dt 2
where h is in deg, t is in ms, and r is in N/m.
Integrating the above equation, we get general bubble growth
equation in terms of heat supplied, mass flux, thermal properties
of the flowing fluid, and channel geometry as follows: Result
Few experimental works are available in open literature on bub-
Ac c pa/ ble growth at the nucleation site for microchannels [21,43,52,53].
q00 t gql qv r2
Ach 2 2 Figure 3 shows comparison of the proposed model with Liu et al.
[21] experimental and Zhuan and Wang [35] numerical work.
lG
r 2 p b p b lnr Results show good agreement between bubble diameter predicted
4 ql by the model and experimental data. The mean absolute percent-
" 00 2 #
G2 c q pb age error (MAPE) of Zhuan and Wang [35] numerical study is
p a qv hfg r C (24) around 7%, whereas MAPE of current model is around 14%.
ql 2 hfg qv
In order to find out the influence of energy consumed in bubble
growth and different resistive effects on growth process, their var-
Bubble growth at nucleation site is finally calculated by solving iations during entire bubble growth period since inception until
Eq. (24) at given operating conditions (G, q00 ), channel geometry departure need to be investigated. Figure 4 shows variations of the
(Ach), and thermal properties of working fluid (hfg, l, ql, qv)
at different time intervals (from experimental observations) by
Secant method [49].
Integration constant (C) is calculated by applying boundary
condition; t tFV 0; r rc rmin and given by Eq. (25). As the
bubble becomes visible at nucleation site, when it reaches up to
cavity mouth, the minimum visible bubble radius is assumed as
nucleation cavity radius and is given by the following equation:
pa/ 2
C gql qv rmin
2
l Gp b
2p q b lnrmin
q 4
" l 00 2 #
G2 c q pb
p a qv hfg rmin (25)
ql 2 hfg qv
Fig. 5 (a), (b) Comparison of present model with Lee et al. [43]
Ac c
q00
dr Ach 2
" 00 2 # (28)
dt rrmin G2 q pb G 1 pa/
p a qv hfg c r 2 p b l pb gql qv rmin
2ql hfg qv 4 ql rmin 2