Cold Flow Calorimeter

The cold flow calorimeter is an apparatus for measuring a possibly rapidly varying heat-transfer coefficient on a surface. The cold flow calorimeter includes (1) a small strain gauge bonded to a small, thin steel shim that is placed on the surface of interest and (2) a circuit that controls the electric power supplied to the strain gauge to keep the strain-gauge grid at a constant temperature [e.g., 150 °F (≈66 °C)]. The instantaneous value of the heattransfer coefficient is deduced from the instantaneous power required to maintain the constant temperature. The heat-transfer coefficient measurable by use of this apparatus can range from values characteristic of natural convection to values as large as about 1,000 Btu/(ft·h·°R) [≈1.7 kW/(m·K).