Penetration characteristics of a submerged steam jet

An experimental investigation was made of the lenght of the turbulent vapor cavity formed by a steam jet discharging into a subcooled liquid water both. The experiments considered both constant area and convergent‐divergent steam injectors of various external geometries. The tests were conducted with the bath at atmospheric pressure, bath temperatures in the range 301–358K, injector exit diameters in the range 0.00040–0.0112 m, for choked injector flows having mass velocities in the range 332–2050 kg/m^2.s. These conditions yielded injector exit Reynolds numbers from 2 to 150 × 10⁴. Over this range a correlation was developed to yield the length of the vapor cavity as a function of the injector diameter, exit mass velocity, and a driving potential for the condensation process. The heat transfer coefficients for this condensation process were found to be significantly greater than those encountered in turbulent film condensation processes in the vicinity of tubes and walls.