Gravity-assisted melting in a horizontal cylinder heated by external forced convection

The results of an experimental study of melting of a free solid in a cylinder heated by external forced convection have been presented. The ranges for the average wall Stefan number and Archimedes number have been varied between 0.026 to 0.053 and 8.76×106 to 3.34×108 respectively. Multiple runs have been made for most of these cases using different values of Reynolds number and free stream temperature to obtain the desired average wall Stefan number. Though the melt rate is almost identical to that for the isothermally heated capsule in about half the tests, it is strongly affected by the dynamics of the melting process in other cases, where two different melt patterns are observed.