Understanding nucleate pool boiling heat transfer and, in particular the accurate prediction of conditions that can lead to critical heat flux, is of the utmost importance in many industries. Due to the safety issues related to the nuclear power plants, and for the efficient operation of many heat transfer units including fossil fuel boilers, fusion reactors, electronic chips, etc., it is important to understand this kind of heat transfer. In this paper, a comprehensive review of analytical and numerical work on nucleate pool boiling heat transfer is presented. In order to understand this phenomenon, existing studies on boiling heat transfer coefficient and boiling heat flux are also discussed, as well as characteristics of boiling phenomena such as bubble departure diameter, bubble departure frequency, active nucleation site density, bubble waiting and growth period and their impact on pool boiling heat transfer.

The essential ideas of investigations of turbulent flow in a straight rectangular duct are chronologically presented. Fundamentally significant experimental and theoretical studies for mathematical modeling and numerical computations of this flow configuration are analyzed. An important physical aspect of this type of flow is presence of secondary motion in the plane perpendicular to the streamwise direction, which is of interest from both the engineering and the scientific viewpoints. The key facts for a task of turbulence modeling and optimal choice of the turbulence model are obtained through careful examination of physical mechanisms that generate secondary flows.