Development of Boiling and Two-Phase Flow Experiments on board ISS: Investigation on Performance of Ground Model

Abstract

Experiments were performed to verify the performance of experimental apparatus for the acquisition of reference data for flow boiling heat transfer under the terrestrial condition which is to be compared with that obtained under the microgravity condition onboard International Space Station (ISS) by using another apparatus with the same specification. Test section is a circular tube made of copper with an inner diameter of 4 mm and a heated length of 368 mm and oriented vertically on ground. To improve the accuracy of local heat fluxes, the compensation of heat flux distribution along the tube axis is discussed on the basis of the experimental results on the local heat transfer coefficients for a single-phase liquid flow. Correlations for local heat transfer coefficient of flow boiling are proposed here as functions of boiling number and Martinelli parameter in the regions of nucleate boiling and two-phase forced convection, respectively. Because the discrepancy of local heat transfer coefficient obtained from the apparatus for the terrestrial and the space experiments is caused by the difference of surface roughness in nucleate boiling region, a compensation factor is introduced in the correlation. The local heat transfer coefficients predicted by the proposed correlation are agreed well with those obtained by both apparatus.