Some parameter boundaries governing microgravity pool boiling modes.

Abstract

Pool boiling experiments were conducted in microgravity on five space shuttle flights, using a flat plate heater consisting of a semitransparent thin gold film deposited on a quartz substrate that also acted as a resistance thermometer. The test fluid was R-113, and the vapor bubble behavior at the heater surface was photographed from beneath as well as from the side. Each flight consisted of a matrix of three levels of imposed heat flux and three levels of initial bulk liquid subcooling. In many of the total of 45 experiments, steady nucleate boiling was observed from 16-mm movie films, where a large vapor bubble formed and remained slightly removed from the heater surface, with small vapor bubbles growing on the heater surface, and on contact coalescing with the large bubble. Computations of the forces associated with the momentum transfer in this process, which counters the Marangoni convection effects tending to impel the large bubble toward the heater surface, have been completed for all cases where applicable. The modes of pool boiling observed with successive increases in levels of heat flux in microgravity are categorized as: (i) minimum or incipient nucleate boiling; (ii) nucleate boiling with vigorous motion of the bubbles adjacent and parallel to the heater surface, impelled by Marangoni convection effects; (iii) nucleate boiling followed by coalescence with a neighboring large vapor bubble; (iv) partial dryout of the heater surface, in parallel with nucleate boiling; (v) complete dryout. The boundaries between these modes are delineated graphically as a function of the imposed heat flux and initial bulk liquid subcooling, together with the levels of the forces holding the large bubbles, acting as vapor reservoirs, away from the heater surface for the steady nucleate boiling mode.