| Abstract: | The objective of the present work is to perform a photographic study of the burnout in highly subcooled flow boiling, in order to provide a qualitative description of the flow pattern under different conditions of boiling regime: ONB (onset of nucleate boiling), subcooled flow boiling and thermal crisis. In particular, the flow visualisation is focused on the phenomena occurring on the heated wall during the thermal crisis up to the physical burnout of the heater. Vapour bubble parameters are measured from flow images recorded, while the wall temperature is measured with an indirect method, by recording the heater elongation during all flow regimes studied. The combination of bubble parameters and wall temperature measurements as well as direct observations of the flow pattern, for all flow regimes, are collected in graphs which provide a useful global point of view of boiling phenomena, especially during boiling crisis. Under these conditions, a detailed analysis of the mechanisms leading to the critical heat flux is reported, and the so called events sequence, from thermal crisis occurrence up to heater burnout, is illustrated. |
