Flow boiling in pipe in microgravity

Abstract

Forced convective boiling experiments of HFE-7000 are conducted in earth gravity and under microgravity conditions. The experiment mainly consists in the study of a two-phase flow through a 6 mm diameter sapphire tube uniformly heated by an ITO coating. The parameters of the hydraulic system are set by the conditioning system and measurements of pressure drops, void fraction and wall and fluid temperatures are provided. High-speed movies of the flow are also taken. The data are collected in normal gravity and during a series of parabolic trajectories flown onboard an airplane. Flow visualizations, temperature, void fraction and pressure drop measurements are analyzed to obtain flow pattern, liquid film thickness in annular flow, wall and interfacial shear stresses and heat transfer coefficient.