Lattice Boltzmann Simulation of Thermal Multiphase Flows With Dynamic Wall Interactions

As energy densities in electronic devices rapidly increase, improved two-phase microchannel heat exchanger designs are of great interest. However, a better understanding of flow boiling in these regimes is required. The lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) has shown great promise in the simulation of multiphase flows due to its ability to easily capture interfacial dynamics. This is in contrast to the complicated interface-tracking algorithms required when applying traditional computational fluid dynamics approaches to multiphase flow problems. However, while there have been many recent development to the standard thermal, multiphase LBM, wall interactions are typically oversimplified. These simplifications lead to interactions which are only appropriate for isothermal, static simulations. In this work, we extend the wall interaction potential based on the pseudopotential multiphase approach to correctly model the variable wetting behavior that occurs with changing temperatures. This will enable the future modeling of the flow boiling process with thermally-influenced wetting characteristics.