Application of supervised learning algorithms for temperature prediction in nucleate flow boiling

Abstract

This work investigates the use of supervised learning algorithms to predict temperatures in an experimental test bench, which was initially designed for studying nucleate boiling phenomena with ethylene glycol/water mixtures. The proposed predictive model consists of three stages of machine learning. In the first one, a supervised algorithm block is employed to determine whether the critical heat flux (CHF) will be reached within the test bench limits. This classification relies on input parameters including bulk temperature, tilt angle, pressure, and inlet velocity. Once the CHF condition is established, another machine learning algorithm predicts the specific heat flux at which CHF will occur. Subsequently, based on the classification generated by the first block, the evolution of temperature in response to increases in heat flux is predicted using either the previously estimated heat flux or the physical limits of the experimental facility as the stopping criterion. To accomplish all these predictions, the study compares the performance of various algorithms including artificial neural networks, random forest, support vector machine, AdaBoost, and XGBoost. These algorithms were specifically trained using cross-validation and grid search methods to optimize their effectiveness. Results for the CHF classification purpose demonstrate that the support vector machine algorithm performs the best, achieving an F1-score of 0.872 on the testing dataset, while the boosting methods (AdaBoost and XGBoost) exhibit signs of overfitting. In predicting the CHF value, the artificial neural network achieved the lower nMAE on the testing dataset (6.18%). Finally, the validation of the temperature forecasting models, trained on a dataset composed of 314,476 samples, reveals similar performances across all methods, with R2 values greater than 0.95.