Experimental inward solidification of initially superheated water in a cylinder

The subject of this investigation was the freezing of initially superheated pure water, at small Stefan numbers, contained in a horizontal cylinder. Three experiments were conducted and were compared to an analytical model based upon the heat balance integral method which considered one-dimensional (radial) conductive heat transfer with either zero or a finite amount of initial superheat contained in the water. The equations are solved numerically, employing the Runge-Kutta method for solving the first order governing differential equations. The solution yielded the radius of the phase change boundary as a function of time and the time for the liquid to reach the phase change temperature (0°C) when there is initial superheat. The analytical and experimental solidification time results obtained in this investigation compare very well. As in previous studies, the solidification time was found to be a linear function of Stefan number for zero initial superheat. The analytical results obtained for no initial superheat, though, differ somewhat from the results of some other investigations. Free convection affects appeared to be negligible.