Experimental Study of Pool Boiling Critical Heat Flux on Thin Wires under Various Gravities

The experimental study of pure water pool boiling critical heat flux (CHF) on two platinum wires with 26 mm in length and 30 μm and 50 μm in diameters was conducted to investigate the effect of gravity on pool boiling CHF. The gravity level ranges from 1 to 3.5 g, and the saturation pressure ranges from 0.1 to 0.5 MPa. The hypergravity was generated by a centrifugal machine. The comparison between the experimental data under hypergravity and earth gravity shows that the difference between the pool boiling CHF under earth gravity and hypergravity is not significant in the experimental gravity range, almost within ±15% for gravity levels less than 3.5 g, and that generally the CHF under hypergravity is slightly higher than that under earth gravity. The pool boiling CHF experimental data are also used to assess 21 available correlations proposed for the pool boiling CHF under earth gravity to evaluate their applicability to hypergravity.