Prediction of CHF location through applied machine learning

The prediction of critical heat flux (CHF) location is a challenging issue in power generation industries. Several factors viz. geometric parameters and operating conditions influence the occurrence of CHF, and many mechanisms have been proposed to better explain the physics behind the occurrence of CHF. As CHF is a complex phenomenon, its dependency on these factors exhibit non-linear relationship. Further, it is challenging to account for all the factors simultaneously in a single model. Moreover, the benchmark experimental data has to be available to validate the constructed model with all the factors viz., operating pressure and power, inlet mass flux and subcooling etc. Due to these reasons, the influence of these factors remain unresolved. Considering the above issues, the present study employs different machine learning models to predict CHF location and identify the accurate model based on the comparisons against the chosen benchmark experimental data. Becker et al. (1983) data bank was selected for machine learning model training as well as the testing due to the wide range of operating conditions covered. Hyperparameter tuning is applied to optimize the performance of the models. Among all the implemented models, the artificial neural network (ANN) model is found to perform well with the training and the test datasets. The mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of the training and testing data points are 4.01% and 6.04%, respectively. The accuracy score of the ANN model is approximately 96% for the training and 94% for the testing datasets. The proposed model is helpful for design engineers and analysts of power plants for design optimization and to reduce the computational time.