Experimental study of the effect of an electric field on thermal exchanges under forced convection with gaseous carbon anhydride in presence of the radiation of the Melusine pile

Previous studies showed that, under free or forced convection, the application of a non-uniform electric field with a sufficient intensity at the neighbourhood of the heating elements resulted in a significant improvement of the thermal exchange coefficient under some flow rate and pressure conditions. But these improvements first required the creation of ions in the gas (shock ionization and existence of a corona effect above a sufficient voltage). This document therefore report further studies performed at the neighbourhood of the Melusine atomic pile which would provide ionizing radiations of much greater intensity. The objectives were, on the one hand, a global verification of work hypotheses imagined for the exchange improvement mechanism, and, on the other hand, to obtain data on the conditions under which this exchange improvement mechanism could be used in channels of a reactor. The authors present the instrumentation (measurement cells, gas circuit, heating circuit, high voltage circuit), describe how physical values are measured (pressure, gas flow rate, temperature of the heating element, gas temperature, high voltage). They describe how they compare powers exchanged under forced convection between dioxide carbon and a heated wire with or without external ionizing radiations, and report the various performed calculations (power supplied to the gas, temperature shift, Nusselt and Reynolds numbers). They report and discuss experimental results obtained outside the pile without ionizing radiations, and within the pile in presence of a ionizing radiation