Two-fluid modeling for low-pressure subcooled flow boiling

In the advanced electronic packaging, low-pressure subcooled flow boiling has been applied in design of compact heat exchangers for the effective electronic cooling. Through literature survey it is noted that little studies were carried out on the low-pressure and low-flow velocity subcooled flow boiling. In this paper a one-dimensional, non-equilibrium two-fluid model is proposed. The model has been validated with existing data in literature for both vertical up-flow and down-flow configurations. The simulated results show that under low-flow velocity the single phase heat transfer fraction is insignificant in vapor generation rate. The predicted results indicate that buoyancy force plays an important role on the void fraction evolvement, especially under low-flow velocity in vertical down-flow configuration.