Inverse Conduction Technique in Hankel Domain Using Infrared Thermography: Application to Droplet Stream Quenching a Metal Disk

Cooling of a hot metal by a spray occurs in various situations. Such is the case for a loss of coolant accident in a nuclear reactor, where a generated spray impacts the fuel rod assemblies. Design of an experimental characterization setup for cooling a hot (600°C) disk shape Nickel sample by a stream of monodisperse droplets is presented here. Non-invasive excitation/measurement techniques have been used in order to implement an inverse technique for quantitative estimation of both wall heat flux and temperature: heating is made by induction and infrared thermography is used for rear face temperature measurement. Control and calibration of the losses are key points here: their level is of the same order of magnitude as the flux removed by the droplets. Examples of inversion are presented.