Parametric study on the two-phase heat transfer in a microchannel using CFD

The study investigates flow boiling in a microchannel using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to analyze the growth of vapor bubbles and the associated heat transfer during phase change. The simulations are conducted using liquid nitrogen as the working fluid within the open-source CFD package OpenFOAM. The volume of fluid (VOF) method with an interface capturing approach is employed, and the Tanasawa evaporation model is used to calculate mass flow and energy transfer at the phase interface. A microchannel with a circular cross-section, segmented into an initial adiabatic section, a heated section, and a terminal adiabatic section, is the focus of this analysis. Previous studies have examined the effects of various parameters on heat transfer in cases involving a single bubble. In this work, multiple bubbles are simulated to more accurately represent actual flow boiling phenomena. Parameters such as wall heat flux, inlet flow rate or Reynolds number, and bubble generation frequency are studied.