According to the force balance analysis on a bubble, the bubble departure diameter in horizontal sub cooled flow boiling is mainly influenced by quasi-steady drag force, surface tension force and bubble growth force while an additional force, buoyancy force, plays an important role in vertical flow boiling. In this paper, the effects of these forces can be concluded by a series of dimensionless parameters including density ratio of vapor and liquid, Prandtl number, Jacob number and bubble Reynolds number. Based on the different forces, two different characteristic lengths are adopted to non-dimensionlize bubble departure diameters in horizontal flow boiling and vertical flow boiling, respectively. Finally, the semi empirical correlations for bubble departure diameters in both horizontal and vertical subcooled flow boiling are proposed in this paper based on the force balance analysis and available experimental data from literature. The predicted results using the present correlations agree fairly well with the experimentally measured values with a mean relative error of 19.72%. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.