Achievement

Mr. Ikeda is investigating microscale thermodynamic cycle designs for energy efficiencies. Despite the scale-independence of thermodynamic cycles, the transport equations that govern the heat and fluid flow within systems are influenced by device size. Non-ideal binary mixtures are explored to utilize microscale effects for the enhancement of thermal transport behavior. The understanding of flow boiling processes in microchannels is limited. Numerical simulations using the phi-phi method were completed to understand cubic equations of state and a paper is being submitted on VLE simulation procedures. The information gained is being implemented into the lattice Boltzmann BGK model to numerically assess the complex flow boiling process. A working, single-component, thermal multiphase flow CFD model was developed, benchmarked, and presented at the ASME-IMECE NSF Poster Symposium and at the APS-DFD conf. A paper has also been accepted and will be presented at the ASME-ICNMM conf.