NATURAL CONVECTION CHARACTERISTICS OF POOL PENETRATION INTO A MELTING MISCIBLE SUBSTRATE.

Experiments were performed to gain an understanding of the convective heat transfer process occurring in a warm liquid pool as it penetrates into an underlying meltable solid of less dense material, for the case where the molten phase of the solid and pool liquid are mutually miscible. Previous experimental work on downward melting penetration made use of warm aqueous salt solution pools overlying solid polyethylene glycol (PEG) or ice, or pools of heated organic liquids with benzene as the frozen substrate. Owing to the complexity of the melting trends observed in these studies, particularly with PEG substrates, a sufficiently definitive theory of the phenomenon has not yet emerged. As part of the present study, an attempt was made to reproduce the previous experimental results for salt-solution-pool penetration into PEG.