To understand the boiling crisis mechanism, one can take advantage of the slowing down of boiling at high pressures, in the close vicinity of the liquid-vapor critical point of the given fluid. To preserve conventional bub- ble geometry, such experiments need to be carried out in low gravity. We report here two kinds of saturated boiling experiments. First we discuss the spatial experiments with SF6 at 46 ◦ C. Next we address two ground-based experi- ments under magnetic gravity compensation with H2 at 33 K. We compare both kinds of experiments and show their complementarity. The dry spots under vapor bubbles are visualized by using transparent heaters made with metal oxide films. We evidence two regimes of the dry spots growth: the regime of circular dry spots and the regime of chain coalescence of dry spots that immediately pre- cedes the heater dryout. A recent H2 experiment is shown to bridge the gap between the near-critical and low pressure boiling experiments.
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http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12217-015-9447-8