Numerical investigation of film boiling heat transfer on the horizontal surface in an oscillating system with low frequencies

Film boiling is of great importance in nuclear safety as it directly influences the integrity of nuclear fuel in case of accidents involving loss of coolant. Recently, nuclear power plant safety under earthquake conditions has received much attention. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no existing studies reporting film boiling in an oscillating system. Most previous studies for film boiling were performed on stationary systems. In this study, numerical simulations were performed for saturated film boiling of water on a horizontal surface under low frequencies to investigate the effect of system oscillation on film boiling heat transfer. A coupled level-set and volume-of-fluid method was used to track the interface between the vapor and liquid phases. With a fixed oscillation amplitude, overall, heat transfer decreases with oscillation frequency. However, there is a frequency region in which heat transfer remains nearly constant. This lock-on phenomenon occurs when the oscillation frequency is near the natural bubble release frequency. With a fixed oscillation frequency, heat transfer decreases with oscillation amplitude. With a fixed maximum amplitude of the additional gravity, heat transfer is affected little by the combination of oscillation amplitude and frequency.