Nucleate boiling at high heat fluxes has been studied numerically by solving the equations governing conservation of mass, momentum and energy in the liquid and vapor phases. The interface is captured by using the level set method based on a sharp-interface representation. The evaporative heat flux from the liquid microlayer is incorporated in the analysis. The effects of wall superheat, number density of nucleation sites and waiting period on the bubble dynamics and heat transfer in nucleate boiling are investigated. The heat fluxes obtained from the present numerical simulations are compared with the experimental data reported in the literature. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.