Effects of turbulence model and interfacial shear on heat transfer in turbulent falling liquid films

An improved method is presented for the prediction of heat transfer coefficients in turbulent falling liquid films with or without interfacial shear for both heating or condensation. A modified Mudawwar and El-Masr's semi-empirical turbulence model, particularly to extend its use for the turbulent falling film with high interfacial shear, is used to replace the eddy viscosity model incorporated in the unified approach proposed by Yih and Liu. The liquid film thickness and asymptotic heat transfer coefficients against the film Reynolds number for wide range of interfacial shear predicted by both present and existing methods are compared with experimental data. The results show that, in general, predictions of the modified model agree more closely with experimental data than that of existing models.