Testing of Ceramics for Production of Heating Elements for Usage in High Temperature Helium Loop

Heating elements are one of the important components of High Temperature Helium Loop. By means of heating elements the heating of test section of the loop to required temperature is provided even in high gas flow rates in the loop. The insulation of heating elements was manufactured of cordierite ceramics. With these elements the maximum projected temperature 900 °C could not be reached because of decreasing of electric resistance among the spirals. Therefore several tests were done in order to discover the reason of the problem. Consequently properties of new ceramic material based on corundum for manufacturing of the new heating elements were verified.