EXPERIMENTS ON THE REFLOODING OF HOT HORIZONTAL TUBES

The physical processes involved in the reflooding of hot horizontal tubes are complicated. Because of gravity, the quench front is inclined with the leading and trailing edges defining the quench of the bottom and top of the tube respectively. Very little data is available to-date on the subject. A systematic study was performed in the present investigation to examine the tube wall thermal behaviour and heat capacity effects using a test section which was thicker than tubes previously used. With an improved thermocouple instrumenting technique, a more detailed tube wall temperature distribution (axial, circumferential and radial) was obtained. The present paper describes the experimental facility and presents a detailed set of data for a typical transient case. Some of the more interesting observations are high-lighted and their physical implications discussed.