Strange attractors and chaos in boiling flows

The use of nonlinear dynamics theory for the analysis of the experimental results of a two phase flashing flow is presented. The experiments were performed on a Freon 113 flow visualization loop. The paper concentrates on the void distribution in order to provide evidence that the observed behavior is deterministic and chaotic. The temporal void fraction fluctuations following the onset of boiling were studied using the methods of nonlinear dynamics and deterministic chaos theory. The void fraction formation was shown to be a deterministic process that turns out to be chaotic.