On the limitations of CFD modelling of flow boiling at high flow velocities and high heat fluxes

Abstract

The ability of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models to predict flow boiling at high heat flux and high flow velocity conditions has been investigated. High heat fluxes of about 10 MW/m 2 and high flow velocities of about 10 m/s typically appear in water cooling channels of divertor target elements in fusion reactors. In particular, the heat flux partitioning model used in the two-fluid CFD formulation was studied. CFD simulations of flow boiling in realistic divertor target cooling channels were performed and compared with conservative single-phase simulations. The predictive capability of CFD models for boiling was evaluated using experimental data, covering a wide range of flow velocities and heat fluxes. Existing CFD models correctly predicted void fraction and wall temperature at low flow velocities, but showed physically irrelevant results at higher velocities (above 3 m/s) leading to wall temperature overestimation. The study identified the wall heat flux partitioning model as the main contributor to the mispredictions and thoroughly discussed the main modelling shortcomings. By analysing the impact of operating conditions, some key boiling parameters, and state-of-the-art heat flux partitioning models, improvements of the model parameters are proposed. The simulations and model analyses are performed within the framework of the ANSYS CFX code and the results are compared with flow boiling experiments in uniformly and top-heated flow channels.