Film boiling on a reactive surface

Abstract To help understand the rapid oxidation of high-temperature materials immersed in water, we treat here the flow of a liquid over a reactive body; the temperature of the body is such that the liquid undergoes film boiling at its surface. Contained within the film that envelopes the surface is the evaporated liquid which diffuses to the surface and reacts there to form product gas which diffuses away from the surface. The two-phase flow and heat and mass transfer problem which arises is formulated within the framework of steady-state stagnation flow theory. The theory is applied to the quasi-steady oxidation of molten zirconium spheres falling through water and predicts results which are consistent with available zirconium sphere oxidation data.