Analytical and semi-analytical models of conduction controlled rewetting: A state-of-the-art review

Abstract

The phenomenon of rewetting finds application in several fields of industrial and scientific applications including the loss of coolant accidents in nuclear reactors. In order to analyze the phenomena of rewetting, usually a conduction controlled approach or hydrodynamic approach was considered. Because of complexity, most of the studies adopt a conduction controlled approach to analyze the phenomena of rewetting. In view of this, various analytical and semi-analytical techniques have been used to solve the conduction equation. Investigations have mostly considered different geometries, various convective boundary conditions for both the dry and wet surface, effect of heat generation, variable properties, coupling between conduction and convection as well as other variations of the problem. A comprehensive review of the available analytical models is presented in this paper.