Numerical Simulation of Droplet Size Distribution in the Whole Process of Dropwise Condensation

Studying droplet size distribution on the condensation surface not only understands the heat transfer mechanism on the condensation surface, but also provides the reference for the design of the hydrophobic surface. In this paper, the effects of condensation nucleation density and droplet removal size on droplet size distribution were studied by numerical simulation for the whole process of droplet growth, coalescence and removal. In the simulation, the thermal resistance model was used to describe the droplet growth. The linked-list algorithm accelerated the searching in droplet coalescence and re-nucleation. Large droplet removal and surface cleaning were presented. The simulation results were in good agreement with the experimental results and theoretical model. The results showed that the increasing of nucleation density leaded to the increasing of small droplet density and decreasing of droplet average radius and smaller droplet removal size resulted in narrower droplet size range and lower droplet size distribution. © 2020, Science Press. All right reserved.