A New Facility for Measurements of Three-Dimensional, Local Subcooled Flow Boiling Heat Flux and Related Critical Heat Flux

Abstract In the development of plasma-facing components (PFC) for fusion reactors and high heat flux heat sinks (or components) for electronic applications, the components are usually subjected to a peripherally non-uniform heat flux. Even if the applied heat flux is uniform in the axial direction [which is unlikely], both intuition and recent investigations have clearly shown that both the local heat flux and the eventual critical heat flux (CHF) in this three-dimensional case will differ significantly from similar quantities found in the voluminous body of data for uniformly heated tubes and flow channels. Although this latter case has been used in the past as an estimate for the former case, more study has become necessary to examine the three-dimensional temperature and heat flux distributions and related CHF. Work thus far has shown that the non-uniform peripheral heat flux condition enhances CHF in some cases. In order to avoid the excess costs associated with using electron- or ion-beams to produce the non-uniform heat flux, a new facility was developed which will allow three-dimensional conjugate heat transfer measurements and two-dimensional local subcooled flow boiling heat flux and related critical heat flux measurements. The configurations under study consist of: (1) a non-uniformly heated cylindrical-like test section with a circular coolant channel bored through the center, and (2) a monoblock which is a square cross-section parallelepiped with a circular drilled flow channel through the center line along its length. The theoretical or idealization of the cylindrical-like test section would be a circular cylinder with half (−90 degrees to +90 degrees) of its outside boundary subjected to a uniform heat flux and the remaining half insulated. For the monoblock, a uniform heat flux is applied to one of the outside surfaces and the remaining surfaces are insulated. The outside diameter of the cylindrical-like test section is 30.0 mm and its length is 200.0 mm. The monoblock square has lengths 30.0 mm. The inside diameter of the flow channel for both types of test sections is 10.0 mm. Water is the coolant. The inlet water temperature can be set at any level in the range from 26.0 °C to 130.0 °C and the exit pressure can be set at any level in the range from 0.4 MPa to 4.0 MPa. Thermocouples are placed at forty-eight locations inside the solid cylindrical-like or monoblock test section. For each of four axial stations, three thermocouples are embedded at four circumferential locations (0, 45, 135, and 180 degrees, where 0 degrees corresponds to that portion of the axis of symmetry close to the heated surface) in the wall of the test section. Finally, the mass velocity can be set at any level in the range from 0.6 to 10.0 Mg/m2s.