A 3-dimenional CFD study of boiling in jet impingement

Abstract

This work conducts a numerical investigation of water jet impingement cooling during the steel quenching process. Although much of the simulation work in the literature relies on two-dimensional analyses, this study developed a three-dimensional CFD simulation model using Ansys-Fluent. The Eulerian mixture formulation with the volume of fluid (VOF) method was employed. It is shown that the developed model accurately simulates the boiling behavior in impingement cooling using circular water jets. The main parameters used in the simulation were: initial surface temperature of 700 °C, and jet velocity of \(0.4\,m/s\) impinging from a nozzle at \(8\,mm\) height from the heated surface. The 3D mesh has been refined in a way to maintain a \({y}^{+}\) value of 1 at the heated surface to capture the physics on the surface and to ensure that the viscous boundary layer is captured. Results such as temperature drop, boiling curve, and bubble frequency were presented and verified with the available experimental work in the literature. The developed mixture simulation using Ansys-Fluent has demonstrated its capability to numerically simulate the temperature history and boiling curves in the impingement process. This advancement will facilitate the study of numerous industrial parameters that are challenging to investigate experimentally.