Screening Ceramic Materials for Intense Radiant Heat Applications

摘要

The Sandia 16kW solar furnace was used to expose the candidate materials to high flux density sunlight. The specimen (normally 6 x 6 x 1 in. size) was positioned at the focus of the parabolic concentrator with the attenuator closed. The attenuator was opened incrementally in steps of about 5 W/sq. cm. Each step up was made after holding a constant flux density on the last step for one minute. The specimen was visually observed during the flux density increases using our closed circuit video system. We considered failure to be the flux density at which the specimen started to melt, crack or shrink. While working out this test procedure, it was determined that step plateaus longer than one minute did not alter the flux density at which the specimen failed. (ERA citation 10:018250)