Physics based boiling bubble simulation

Abstract

Boiling is a daily observed phenomenon. From the physics point of view, boiling is due to the rapid vaporization of liquid like water. In fact, it consists of several complex processes. First, energy transfer, which mainly includes thermal conduction and convection, occurs between the heat source and water, between water molecules and bubbles, and between water molecules and water molecules. Second, there are multiple phases of boiling, each of which has different characteristics, and hence, makes boiling a complicated physical process. In this paper, we propose a new physics based method for simulating bubbles from boiling water with a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) solver. The proposed work handles "vapor" bubbles rather than "air" bubbles. The most important difference is that the former can condense and merge with the surrounding water while the latter cannot. With our model, 5 interesting phenomena of boiling bubbles are introduced which have not been fully addressed in previous works.