Visual study of propagation of self-sustained evaporation front within the thickness of a thermal liquid layer

In the range of low reduced pressures, the development of self-sustained evaporation front along the heat-releasing surface at non-stationary heat release is an important factor that determines possible transition to film boiling at heat fluxes, significantly lower than the critical heat fluxes at stationary heat release. This paper presents the experimental results on the scale of a leading part of the interface of self-sustained evaporation front at stepped heat release. The scale of the leading part of the interface of the evaporation front is compared with the thermal layer thickness, registered using the shadow method of visualization at high-speed video shooting with up to 25,000 frames per second. Experiments were carried out in Freon R21 under the conditions of free convection at relative pressures of 0.032 - 0.068. It is shown that self-sustained evaporation front spreads along the heated wall within the thickness of a liquid layer, superheated relative to the saturation temperature. Dependence of the front velocity on wall superheating relative to the saturation temperature does not change with significant subcooling to the temperature of liquid saturation in the volume.