Quench cooling under reduced gravity

Abstract : We report quench cooling experiments performed with liquid O2 under different levels of gravity, simulated with magnetic gravity compensation. A copper disk is quenched from 300 to 90 K. It is found that the cooling time in microgravity is very long in comparison with any other gravity level. This phenomenon is explained by the insulating effect of the gas surrounding the disk. A weak gas pressurization (which results in subcooling of the liquid with respect to the saturation temperature) is shown to drastically improve the heat exchange, thus reducing the cooling time (about 20 times). The effect of subcooling on the heat transfer is analyzed at different gravity levels. It is shown that this type of experiment cannot be used for the analysis of the critical heat flux of the boiling crisis. The film boiling heat transfer and the minimum heat flux of boiling are analyzed as functions of gravity and subcooling.