Subcooled Pool Boiling Heat Transfer Mechanisms in Microgravity: Terrier-improved Orion Sounding Rocket Experiment

A microscale heater array was used to study boiling in earth gravity and microgravity. The heater array consisted of 96 serpentine heaters on a quartz substrate. Each heater was 0.27 square millimeters. Electronic feedback loops kept each heater's temperature at a specified value. The University of Maryland constructed an experiment for the Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket that was delivered to NASA Wallops and flown. About 200 s of high quality microgravity and heat transfer data were obtained. The VCR malfunctioned, and no video was acquired. Subsequently, the test package was redesigned to fly on the KC-135 to obtain both data and video. The pressure was held at atmospheric pressure and the bulk temperature was about 20 C. The wall temperature was varied from 85 to 65 C. Results show that gravity has little effect on boiling heat transfer at wall superheats below 25 C, despite vast differences in bubble behavior between gravity levels. In microgravity, a large primary bubble was surrounded by smaller bubbles, which eventually merged with the primary bubble. This bubble was formed by smaller bubbles coalescing, but had a constant size for a given superheat, indicating a balance between evaporation at the base and condensation on the cap. Most of the heaters under the bubble indicated low heat transfer, suggesting dryout at those heaters. High heat transfer occurred at the contact line surrounding the primary bubble. Marangoni convection formed a "jet" of fluid into the bulk fluid that forced the bubble onto the heater.