Prediction of forced convective heat transfer and critical heat flux for subcooled water flowing in miniature tubes

The heat transfer characteristics of forced convection for subcooled water in small tubes were clarified using the commercial computational fluid dynamic (CFD) code, PHENICS ver. 2013. The analytical model consists of a platinum tube (the heated section) and a stainless tube (the non-heated section). Since the platinum tube was heated by direct current in the authors’ previous experiments, a uniform heat flux with the exponential function was given as a boundary condition in the numerical simulation. Two inner diameters of the tubes were considered: 1.0 and 2.0 mm. The upward flow velocities ranged from 2 to 16 m/s and the inlet temperature ranged from 298 to 343 K. The numerical results showed that the difference between the surface temperature and the bulk temperature was in good agreement with the experimental data at each heat flux. The numerical model was extended to the liquid sublayer analysis for the CHF prediction and was evaluated by comparing its results with the experimental data. It was postulated that the CHF occurs when the fluid temperature near the heated wall exceeds the saturated temperature, based on Celata et al.’s superheated layer vapor replenishment (SLVR) model. The suggested prediction method was in good agreement with the experimental data and with other CHF data in literature within ±25%.