• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.39 no.12
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• pp.953-963
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• 2015

There is an increasing need to understand the thermal-hydraulic phenomena, including the critical heat flux (CHF), in narrow rectangular channels and consider these in system design. The CHF mechanism under a saturated flow boiling condition involves the depletion of the liquid film of an annular flow. To predict this type of CHF, the previous representative liquid film dryout models (LFD models) were studied, and their shortcomings were reviewed, including the assumption that void fraction or quality is constant at the boundary condition for the onset of annular flow (OAF). A new LFD model was proposed based on the recent constitutive correlations for the droplet deposition rate and entrainment rate. In addition, this LFD model was applied to predict the CHF in vertical narrow rectangular channels that were uniformly heated. The predicted CHF showed good agreement with 284 pieces of experimental data, with a mean absolute error of 18. 1 % and root mean square error of 22.9 %.