Falling Film Transition and Heat Transfer On Horizontal Circular Cylinders
Falling Film Transition and Heat Transfer On Horizontal Circular Cylinders
Falling Film Transition and Heat Transfer On Horizontal Circular Cylinders
and Ga = 3/( L 4 g), where is the liquid flow rate per unit
length, L and L are the liquid density and dynamic viscosity,
respectively, and is the surface tension.
Studies of flow transition of the falling film modes have attracted
the attention of many researchers. Yung et al. [11] have
investigated the jet-droplet transition. Their correlation can be
written as,
List of Symbols
g
Ga
L 4g)
Nu
Nu
q
Re
Introduction
The rate of heat transfer that exists between falling liquid film
and a horizontal cylinder is generally high. For this reason,
3
d p 2
= 0.81 L
6 L 3
0.5
(1)
= CL
Lg
(2)
Experimental Setup
A schematic diagram of the experimental test rig is shown in
Figure 1. The test rig was designed after considering several
schemes described in the literature. Further experimental details
are given by Jafar et al. [7, 8].
Numerical Model
The system investigated in this paper consists of a column of
cylinders, the axes of which are parallel and located one above
the other as indicated in Figures 2 and 3 for the 2D and 3D
configurations, respectively. Water, with a uniform velocity, is
introduced onto the array of cylinders through a slot nozzle
located above the top cylinder. Three phases, liquid (water), gas
(air) and solid (the cylinders) were modelled numerically.
Numerical simulations have been performed at liquid mass flow
rates of 0.0125, 0.025, 0.0625, 0.125, 0.2, 0.325, 0.5 and 0.75
kg/(ms), to achieve Reynolds numbers of 50, 100, 250, 500, 800,
1,300, 2,000 and 3,000, respectively. A commercial finitevolume CFD code, FLUENT has been used for the simulations.
The grid has been generated in GAMBIT. Half of the domain has
A tri-pave mesh has been generated for the fluid and solid
domains using a boundary layer technique, where the boundary
layer around the cylinder is relatively small. This boundary layer
thickness has been found to accurately capture phenomena that
occur in the liquid adjacent to the cylinder walls. A size function
technique has been employed to smoothly control the growth in
the mesh size over a particular region of the geometry starting
from a source or origin. It can also be used for smooth transition
from a fine mesh needed to resolve flow physics with curved
geometries and to model flows in thin gaps.
a
Flow Mode Visualization
To understand the falling film modes and transitions, a horizontal
cylinder can be considered with a smooth thin liquid film around
it. The hanging or suspended drops separate from the lowest
cylinder position. Some drops might break away from the film
and fall under the effect of gravity prior to this position. This is
the beginning of the droplet mode from a falling liquid film. The
axial distance between the neighbouring droplets is determined
primarily by the wavelength of the most unstable free surface.
At low liquid flow rates, liquid droplets fall with a low frequency
from the bottom of the top horizontal cylinder to the one below.
The droplet formation frequency increases with an increasing
liquid flow rate. With a further increase of the liquid flow rate,
the liquid leaves the cylinder at the same location in a continuous
column. This event is the transition from the droplet to dropletjet mode. With a further of increase of the liquid flow rate, a
transition from the droplet-jet to the jet mode occurs. As the flow
rate increases further, the liquid leaves the surface in a
continuous column in the jet mode, where the diameter of the
liquid jet increases with the flow rate. When the flow rate
increases even further, the jet becomes unstable and an additional
column appears, resulting in the jet-sheet to sheet mode
transition. The liquid jets are unsteady in location for a short
time. Then, the sheet thickness becomes thin, and the sheet
becomes stable at a closer spacing to produce a full sheet mode.
Liquid film modes have been observed from the present
experimental and numerical flow visualization results. A brief
summary is presented in Figures 4 and 5, respectively.
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
Reynolds number
Figure 6. Average Nusselt number for droplet, jet and sheet modes at
different Reynolds numbers, present experimental (Exp) and numerical
(Num) results.
0.022m diameter
0.1m diameter
0.123m diameter
12000
10000
References
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
Exp.
Conclusions
Num.
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0
50
100
150
200