Boiling Heat Transfer With Cryogenic Fluids at Standard, Fractional, and Near-Zero Gravity

Abstract

A study is reported of boiling heat transfer with saturated liquid nitrogen under atmospheric pressure at standard, fractional, and near-zero gravity. A drop-tower technique is used to achieve the reduced gravities. Because of the short test time available a transient technique using a sphere as a transient calorimeter is employed to obtain the heat-transfer data. This technique permits the ready acquisition of data in all boiling regimes from the film boiling region through nucleate boiling. Comparison is made with correlations for film boiling and for maximum and minimum heat flux and their corresponding Δtsat.