Condensation of Flowing Vapor on a Horizontal Tube—Numerical Analysis as a Conjugate Heat Transfer Problem Available to Purchase

Condensation of flowing vapor on a horizontal tube is numerically analyzed under given conditions of vapor and coolant. Besides the usual boundary layer concept, some approximations are introduced for the determination of shear stress at the vapor-liquid interface. The conjugation of the two-phase boundary layer equations and the heat conduction equation within the tube wall is achieved by using an iterative scheme at the outer surface of the tube wall. The solution thus obtained reveals the effects of vapor velocity, tube material, heat transfer of coolant side, etc., upon circumferential distributions of temperature, heat flux density, and Nusselt number at the outer tube surface. Also the solution compared well with available experimental results for the wall temperature distribution and average Nusselt number. The heat transfer characteristics of steam and refrigerant vapors resemble those of the tubes with uniform wall heat flux density and uniform wall temperature, respectively.