Freezing around a Cooled Pipe in Crossflow

Abstract

The phenomenon of freezing around a cooled pipe in crossflow is investigated experimentally and theoretically. The thicknesses of a frozen layer under various freezing conditions - temperatures of water and the cooled pipe, the velocity of water, and the pipe diameter - are measured at both transient and steady states, and the characteristic shape of the frozen layer is obtained. The equations expressing the shape of the frozen layer are obtained from the characteristic, and the process of growth of the frozen layer is analyzed from combining the heat conduction in the frozen layer with the forced convection heat transfer around the frozen layer. It is shown that the analytical results agree well with the experimental results. A simple non-dimensional relationship between the overall heat transfer rate from water to the pipe at the steady state and the above mentioned freezing conditions is obtained from the analysis and the experiments.