Determination of the natural convection coefficient in low-gravity

Fire safety is an important issue in the current space program; ignition in low-g needs to be studied. The reduction in the gravitational acceleration causes changes in the ignition process. This paper examines the effect of gravity on natural convection, which is one of the important parameters in the ignition process. The NASA-Lewis 2.2 Second Drop Tower provided the low-gravity environment for the experiments. A series of experiments was conducted to measure the temperature of a small copper plate which was heated by a high intensity lamp. These experiments verified that in low-gravity the plate temperature increased faster than in the corresponding 1-g cases, and that the natural convection coefficient rapidly decreased in the low-gravity environment.