Transient Heat Transfer for Forced Convection Flow of Helium Gas(Special Issue on International Conference on Power and Energy System)

The knowledge of forced convection transient heat transfer at various periods of exponential increase of heat input to a heater is important as a database for understanding the transient heat transfer process in a high temperature gas cooled reactor (HTGR) due to an accident in excess reactivity. The transient heat transfer coefficients for forced convection flow of helium gas over a horizontal cylinder were measured using a forced convection test loop. The platinum heater with a diameter of 1.0 mm was heated by electric current with an exponential increase of Q_0 exp(t/τ). It was clarified that the heat transfer coefficient approaches the quasi-steady-state one for the period τ over 1 s, and it becomes higher for the period of τ shorter than 1 s. The transient heat transfer shows less dependent on the gas flowing velocity when the period becomes very shorter. Semi-empirical correlations for quasi-steady-state and transient heat transfer were developed based on the experimental data.