Improved Estimation of Subcooled Flow Boiling Heat Flux for Automotive Engine Cooling Applications

Abstract

Tapping the potential of subcooled flow boiling can be the key strategy for enhanced cooling of modern day internal combustion engines with high specific power. Accurate prediction of the boiling heat flux is a prerequisite for employing such strategy and to avoid stepping into the dangerous film boiling regime. The complexity involved in the boiling phenomena makes it difficult to develop a model that accounts for all the dominant mechanisms. However, boiling models available in literature provide a good estimate of the heat flux within their range of applicability. This work attempts to introduce a blending based on probability of bubble nucleation to blend two different models developed for different boiling regimes. Corroboration of results with experiments show improved estimation of boiling heat flux.