Pool Boiling Critical Heat Flux in Reduced Gravity

An experimental investigation has been conducted to measure pool boiling critical heat fluxes in reduced gravity. A horizontal cylindrical cartridge heater immersed in water at reduced pressures during parabolic flights on NASA’s KC-135 resulted in boiling on the heater surface. Visual observations and qualitative data trends indicate that the conventional Taylor-Helmholtz. instability model still governs the critical heat flux mechanism over the range of gravitational accelerations of the current study, which range from 0.0005 < g/go < 0.044. Using data from more than 40 individual tests, two semi-empirical correlations have been developed to account for the effect of thermocapillary flow, which tends to decrease the critical heat flux below the predictions of previous correlations.