Abstract
An effort has been made to numerically study the interactions between the vapor films generating from multiple heated cylinders placed in a saturated water pool with a view to understand the influence of neighboring interface on growth of vapor films. Lagrangian smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) has been used for domain discretization and interface reconstruction. Unconstrained growth of vapor film around a cylinder is simulated first and the nature of vapor dynamics has been taken as a base case for the study of interaction patterns. Vapor growth has been understood through temporal phase contours, azimuthal thickness variation, and trajectory of the centroid of the vapor mass. It has been shown that the presence of cylinder in vertical neighborhood results in suppression of vapor film generating from the bottom cylinder, whereas, the vapor films generating from two cylinders placed in horizontal neighborhood experience a horizontal shift. Studies have also been made to observe multidirectional interactions of vapor films with heated cylinders placed in an inline array, vertically staggered and horizontally staggered arrangements. It has been found that the highest deviation from unconstrained growth occurs in case of the center cylinder in a horizontally staggered arrangement as compared to others. Mutual interaction coefficient and indices are proposed to judge the best possible arrangement in case of a requirement for placement of stacked cylinders.
