Experiment Research of Vapor Bubble Stochastic Characteristics in a Narrow Rectangular Channel

In most of the previous studies, the vapor bubble parameters were averaging processed in order to establish the empirical-based correlations or mechanism-based models. While it should be noted that the thermal hydraulic parameters around a bubble in a subcooled flow boiling channel are unsteady, that means the vapor bubbles behaves some stochastic characteristics. In the present research, a high speed visualization experiment was conducted in a subcooled flow boiling narrow rectangular channel to investigate the vapor bubble behavior. The working fluid in the experiment was deionized water. The obtained bubble images were processed by a digital image processing program in order to acquire the bubble parameters. The stochastic features of the bubbles were analyzed based on the experimental results. Two types of bubble behaviors were observed under different working conditions, which results in two types of bubble stochastic features. The results shown that the distribution function of the bubble maximum diameter in a specific nucleation site can be expressed by the normal distribution, while in the whole range of the observation window the distribution of the bubble maximum diameter was expressed by the lognormal distribution. The distribution of the second type bubble diameter depends on the local bubble nucleation site and the upstream bubble behaviors.