Lattice Boltzmann Simulation of the Growth and Departure of Vapor Bubble in Flow Boiling

In this work the liquid-vapor transition in flow boiling was numerically studied through a two-phase lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). The benchmark test of the nucleate boiling with a single nucleate site was adopted to validate our computational code. Then the focus moves to the behavior of the bubble growth and departure induced by a heated plate in shear flow. The effects of the shear flow were examined by varying its magnitude. In addition, the wettability of the heated plate was also taken into account. It has been shown that the shear flow has negligible effect on the period of bubble release for the neutral and hydrophilic surfaces, which, however, is not the case for the hydrophobic surface.