Heat and mass transfer during a sudden loss of vacuum in a liquid helium cooled tube -- Part IV: Freeze range

Abstract

In a series of papers (i.e., Part I--III), we presented our systematic study on nitrogen gas propagation in an evacuated copper tube cooled by liquid helium. This research aims to gain insights into the coupled heat and mass transfer processes involved in a catastrophic vacuum loss in superconducting particle accelerator beamline tubes. Our experimental measurements on nitrogen gas propagation in both normal liquid helium (He I) and superfluid helium (He II) cooled tube revealed a nearly exponential deceleration of the gas propagation. A theoretical model that accounts for the gas dynamics, heat transfer, and condensation was also developed, and various key experimental observations were nicely reproduced in our model simulations. A particularly interesting phenomenon uncovered in our study is that the gas propagation appears to nearly stop beyond a certain distance from the location where condensation starts. We refer to this distance as the freeze range. In this paper, we present our detailed analysis of the freeze range at various inlet mass fluxes and tube diameters. We show that the results can be well described by a simple correlation. The physical mechanism underlying this useful correlation is explained. Knowing the freeze range may allow accelerator engineers to develop protocols for controlling frost-layer contamination in the beamline tubes, which should be of practical importance.