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Mechanical wear is a tribological phenomenon that causes parts deterioration over time when they are in service. The wear causes enormous performance and economic burden on the mechanical applications, and the main aspects of mechanical designs should consider first. Mechanical wear is accelerated in the presence of high temperature that is caused by the frictional forces between the sliding surfaces. The generated temperature is classified into instantaneous (flash) and bulk. Both flash and bulk temperatures are modeled mathematically and verified experimentally. The models utilize different techniques and simplifications in order to obtain valid results. Future directions of the modeling techniques involve enhancing the collection of the experimental data as well as the incorporation of the chemical interactions.

This paper presents the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) validation and scaling assessment of the condensation heat transfer (CHT) models in the presence of non-condensable gas for the passive containment cooling system (PCCS) of the small modular reactor (SMR). The STAR-CCM+ software with 3D scaled-down SMR containment geometries was used in CFD simulations with steam and non-condensable gas (NCG). The limitations and approximations of the previous studies were resolved to avoid scaling distortion and uncertainties. Air was used as the NCG gas with steam. The multi-component gas model was used to define the steam-NCG mixture, and the condensation-seed parameter was used as the source term for the fluid film model. Three different turbulence models were used to check the heat flux performances and temperature distributions on the coolant side. The heat flux was estimated from the axial coolant bulk temperature, which was identical to the test data reduction method. An implicit-unsteady numerical solver was applied to the conjugate heat transfer models between the gas, liquid, and solid regions. Detailed simulations were performed, and simulation results were validated with the measured parameters experimentally. The condensation heat transfer performance was quantified using non-dimensional numbers and compared for different scaled geometries to identify the scaling distortions.

Purpose This paper aims to address the influence of diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings on the frictional power loss of spur gears. It shows potentials for friction and bulk temperature reduction in industrial use. From a scientific point of view, the thermal insulation effect on fluid friction is addressed, which lowers viscosity in the gear contact due to increasing contact temperature. Design/methodology/approach Thermal insulation effect is analyzed in detail by means of the heat balance and micro thermal network of thermal elastohydrodynamic lubrication contacts. Preliminary results at a twin-disk test rig are summarized to categorize friction and bulk temperature reduction by DLC coatings. Based on experiments at a gear efficiency test rig, the frictional power losses and bulk temperatures of DLC-coated gears are investigated, whereby load, speed, oil temperature and coatings are varied. Findings Experimental investigations at the gear efficiency test rig showed friction and bulk temperature reduction for all operating conditions of DLC-coated gears compared to uncoated gears. This effect was most pronounced for high load and high speed. A reduction of the mean gear coefficient of friction on average 25% and maximum 55% was found. A maximum reduction of bulk temperature of 15% was observed. Practical implications DLC-coated gears show a high potential for reducing friction and improving load-carrying capacity. However, the industrial implementation is restrained by the limited durability of coatings on gear flanks. Therefore, a further and overall consideration of key durability factors such as substrate material, pretreatment, coating parameters and gear geometry is necessary. Originality/value Thermal insulation effect of DLC coatings was shown by theoretical analyses and experimental investigations at model test rigs. Although trial tests on gears were conducted in literature, this study proves the friction reduction by DLC-coated gears for the first time systematically in terms of various operating conditions and coatings. Peer review The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-07-2020-0257/

The aim of this present work is to investigate the characteristics of laminar airflow and heat transfer phenomena in a two-dimensional rectangular enclosure with isothermally heated baffles and adiabatic walls. Using the Boussinesq approximation and negligible viscous dissipation effect, the governing equations are solved using the finite volume method and fluent software is used to visualize the simulation results. Different forms of the baffles (trapezoidal, plane, and isosceles shapes) have been examined for several values of Reynolds number (Re) and Richardson number (Ri). In the form of isotherms, streamlines, heating efficiency, average bulk temperature, local and average Nusselt number along the hot surface, the results have been presented. Maximum heating efficiency is found to be achieved for higher values of Reynolds number, and Richardson number. In addition, it is noted that the efficiency of heat transfer decreases with the increase of baffle length. From this study, it is ensured that heat transfer enhancement becomes maximum in presence of plane baffles as compared to the other baffles.

While numerous surface energy-based studies have investigated various aspects of CaSO4 deposition on modified surfaces, the impact of surface temperature though, as a dominant parameter, has not thoroughly been characterized from surface energy perspective. This has led that most previous studies have attained surface energy specifications at ambient temperature for utilization at elevated operating temperatures. The present study examines the impact of surface temperature in the range of 293–368 K, but at a constant bulk temperature less than surface temperature, on surface energy and its sub-components of several metallic surfaces and amorphous carbon-based coatings. Moreover, the influence of surface temperature on the energy of adhesion between CaSO4 precursors and these surfaces, energy of cohesion between precursors as well as wettability of surfaces in terms of spreading coefficient are also investigated. Results showed that the Lewis acid-base sub-component of surface energy experiences profound changes, at least 3-fold increase, with temperature, while it is a maximum of 1.5-fold decrease for the Lifshitz-van der Waals sub-component. A cumulative correlation based on the spreading coefficient is also proposed to project the propensity of investigated surfaces to CaSO4 deposition as a function of temperature and is validated using data from the literature.

This paper introduces the use of thin film copper strips as a potential approach for online quantification of corrosive sulphur content in transformer insulating oils. The progression of sulphur corrosion is tracked by means of the changes in resistance of the thin film copper strips which is measured based on low-resistance measurements using the four-wire measurement method. The results show that the change of resistance of thin film copper is a function of the level of corrosive sulphur compounds (i.e. in ppm) and the bulk temperature of the oil.

In this paper, thicknesses of interfacial nanolayers of alumina-deionized water (DW) and titanium dioxide-deionized water (DW) nanofluids are studied. Thermal conductivities of both nanofluids were measured in a temperature range of 298 to 353 K at particle volume ratios of 0.2 to 1.5% by experiments. A theoretical model considered both the effects of the interfacial nanolayer and Brownian motion is developed for thermal conductivity. A relational expression between nanolayer thickness and bulk temperature and volume fraction of particles of nanofluids is derived from the theoretical model. With the experimental data of thermal conductivity, changes of nanolayer thickness with nanofluids macroscopic properties (bulk temperature and particle volume ratio) are obtained. The present results show that nanolayer thickness increases with fluid temperature almost linearly and decreases with particle volume fraction in a power law. Based on the present results, simple formulas of interfacial nanolayer thickness as a function of fluid temperature and particle volume fraction are proposed for both water-based nanofluids.

The hydrodynamics of a steady-state nonisothermal flow of a viscoelastic polymer medium in a plane channel and heat transfer in it under boundary conditions of the first kind have been investigated. Fluid flow with a low Reynolds number and a high Peclet number was investigated, which made it possible to neglect the gravity and inertial forces, as well as the longitudinal thermal conductivity of the medium. From the rheological viewpoint, the polymer melt represents a viscoelastic fluid; therefore the Phan-Thien–Tanner fluid model was used as a rheological model of the fluid, with viscosity depending on temperature and pressure. A high-viscosity medium was considered; therefore a dissipation term was included into the equation of the energy of its flow. With the use of the indicated rheological model the velocity profile of fluid flow was obtained in an explicit form from the equation of fluid motion. It has been established that the dependence of the fluid viscosity on temperature and pressure exerts a noticeable influence on the distribution of the Nusselt number and of bulk temperature of the fluid along the channel length. It is shown that account for the temperature dependence of fluid viscosity leads to a decrease in the role of energy dissipation of its flow in the process of flow heating and that, conversely, the dependence of the fluid viscosity on pressure considerably enhances the dissipation effect. The problem has been solved numerically by the method of finite differences.

A “Quenching and Partitioning” (Q&P)–based heat treatment has been applied to rolled grinding steel (0.75 wt pct C-Mn-Cr) balls of 104-mm diameter to prevent their cracking during heat treatment. The conventional route of ball manufacturing includes rolling, water quenching interrupted when the bulk average temperature is 220 °C to 250 °C, and self-tempering in a large pile. This technology leads to cracking when the balls are made of steel of high hardenability. To overcome this deficiency, the Q&P principle is herein adopted by (a) adjusting the quenching duration to cool the ball center below the martensite start (Ms) temperature and (b) instead of self-tempering applying furnace tempering. The target bulk temperature of the ball that ensures an optimal “martensite/retained austenite” ratio inside the ball at the moment of water quenching interruption is determined as 125 °C to 170 °C. Quenching should be followed by tempering at 200 °C to 250 °C for stress release at the surface and carbon partitioning from martensite to austenite in the core. The resulting microstructure varies from tempered martensite in the “shell” layers to a mixture of martensite-bainite and retained austenite (RA) in the inner zones, where the austenite content is 25 to 30 vol pct. The carbon enrichment in austenite toward the core of the ball leads to balanced stresses and prevention of ball cracking. Q&P-heat-treated balls in an industrial-scale trial attained a uniform hardness of approximately 55 HRC through the cross section and a high fracture resistance under repetitive impacts of 6.8 kJ energy each.

This paper presents the use of fouling targets as a design objective in heat exchanger design. The type of fouling addressed in this work is the scale formation in the operation of coolers. A mathematical model validated against published experimental data is used to predict the buildup of scaling as a function of time. In this work, a fouling target is the fouling resistance value that corresponds to a maximum permitted cooler heat load reduction that is reached in a fixed operating time. Fouling targets are related to operating conditions through a family of curves that relate fouling resistance to fluid velocity, fluid bulk temperature, CaCO3 concentration, and operating time. The design of the exchanger for the targeted fluid velocity sets the basis for the control of fouling from the design stage. The approach is demonstrated on a case study.

Polyimide composites have been extensively used as motion components under extreme conditions for their thermal stability and special self-lubricating performance. In the present study, Ag-Mo hybrids as lubricant fillers were incorporated into thermosetting polyimide to prepare a new type of tribo-materials (TPI-1) at high temperature. Comprehensive investigations at different temperatures reveal that the newly developed TPI-1 exhibits a better reduction in friction and wear rate below 100 °C, but all of them increase significantly when the bulk temperature exceeds 250 °C. The wear mechanisms demonstrated that sandwich-like tribofilms with different layers were established at different temperatures, which was further verified by characterization of scanning electron microscope (SEM), Raman spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscope (TEM). Considering the high-performance TPI coupled with Ag-Mo hybrids, we anticipate that further exploration would provide guidance for designing TPI tribo-materials that would be used at high temperatures.

This article presents results on studying effect of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on the tribological properties of frost-resistant rubber based on epichlorohydrin rubber. The sliding friction coefficient has been determined using a laboratory tribometer according to the “rubber ring-smooth steel disk” contact scheme. Rubber samples have been tested under conditions of dry friction for ranges of normal pressures of 0.1 … 0.4 MPa, sliding velocities of 1 … 100 mm/s for two values of the bulk temperature: 23 and −25° C. The wear rate of the samples has been determined at a temperature of 23° C, pressure of 0.4 MPa, and sliding speed of 10 mm/s. As a counterbody in experiments on the wear resistance assessment, sandpaper made of silicon carbide with a grain size of 120 and 250 microns has been used. It has been found that using CNTs as a filler for studied rubbers leads to an increase in their wear resistance. There is a multiple decrease in the wear rate when filling rubber with a small amount of CNTs (1–2 pts. wt. per 100 pts. wt. of rubber). Moreover, an improvement in physical and mechanical characteristics while maintaining high frost resistance is established. The addition of CNTs to the studied rubbers does not affect the static coefficient of friction.

The convective heat transfer in the Micro/ Nanoscale channel is of significant importance in engineering applications, and the classical macroscopic theory is invalid at depicting its physical processes and mechanisms. In this study, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are conducted to investigate the heat transfer of liquid argon flow through a nanoscale channel. The results show that the fully developed bulk temperature agrees with the continuum based solution of the analytical energy equation at channel height 24 n m , while this agreement reduces with the decrease of the height due to the nanoscale features. At height 6 n m , velocity slip exists around the hydrophobic wall, and enhanced near-wall viscosity of liquid and reduced velocity slip length are observed at larger fluid–wall interaction strength. A region around 2 A wide without liquid atoms is formed at the hydrophilic wall, leading to a zero velocity in this hollow domain and a no-slip boundary condition. Most importantly, the thermal slip length is remarkably dependent on the liquid density layering in the proximity of the wall and inversely proportional to the first peak value of liquid adjacent to the interface. This observation provides a new idea to tune the heat dissipation properties at the fluid–wall interface by controlling the liquid density layering.

We present a Bayesian inference for a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model of Lake Geneva with stochastic weather forcing and high-frequency observational datasets. This is achieved by coupling a Bayesian inference package, SPUX, with a hydrodynamics package, MITgcm, into a single framework, SPUX-MITgcm. To mitigate uncertainty in the atmospheric forcing, we use a smoothed particle Markov chain Monte Carlo method, where the intermediate model state posteriors are resampled in accordance with their respective observational likelihoods. To improve the uncertainty quantification in the particle filter, we develop a bi-directional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) neural network to estimate lake skin temperature from a history of hydrodynamic bulk temperature predictions and atmospheric data. This study analyzes the benefit and costs of such a state-of-the-art computationally expensive calibration and assimilation method for lakes., Geoscientific Model Development, 15 (20), ISSN:1991-9603, ISSN:1991-959X

For highly viscous polymer melts, considerable fluid temperature rises produced by viscous heating can be a disturbing factor in viscosity measurements. By scrutinizing the experimental and simulated capillary pressure losses for polymeric liquids, we demonstrate the importance of applying a viscous heating correction to the shear viscosity, so as to correct for large errors introduced by the undesirable temperature rises. Specifically, on the basis of a theoretical derivation and 3-D nonisothermal flow simulation, an approach is developed for retrieving the equivalent shear viscosity in capillary rheometry, and we show that the shear viscosity can be evaluated by using the average fluid temperature at the wall, instead of the bulk temperature, as previously assumed. With the help of a viscous Cross model in analyzing the shear-dominated capillary flow, it is possible to extract the viscous heating contribution to capillary pressure loss, and the general validity of the methodology is assessed using the experiments on a series of thermoplastic melts, including polymers of amorphous, crystalline, and filler-reinforced types. The predictions of the viscous model based on the equivalent viscosity are found to be in good to excellent agreement with experimental pressure drops. For all the materials studied, a near material-independent scaling relation between the dimensionless temperature rise (Θ) and the Nahme number (Na) is found, Θ ~ Na0.72, from which the fluid temperature rise due to viscous heating as well as the resultant viscosity change can be predicted.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop an energy-efficient and dynamically improved thrust ball bearing using textured race. A texture has been used on the stationary race of the test bearing to conduct the long-duration experiment for exploring its tribological and vibrational behaviours under starved lubricating condition using micro size MoS2 blended grease. The performance behaviours of the textured race bearing have been compared with conventional bearing (i.e. having both races without textures) under the identical operating conditions for demonstrating the advantages of textured race. Design/methodology/approach Texture was created on stationary race of the test ball bearing (51308) using nano-second pulsed Nd: YAG laser. Performance parameters (frictional torque, temperature rise and vibrations) of textured ball bearings were measured under severe starved lubricating conditions for understanding the critical role of texture in the long duration of the test. S-type load cell and miniature accelerometer were used for measuring the frictional torque and vibration, respectively. Bulk temperature at stationary races (at the back side) of test bearings was measured in operating conditions using a non-contact infrared thermometer. Findings Significant reduction in frictional torque and decrease in amplitude of vibration with textured ball bearing were found even under the severe starved lubricating condition in comparison to conventional bearing. Originality/value There is dearth of research pertaining to the performance behaviours of ball bearings using textures on the races. Therefore, an attempt has been made in this study to explore the tribo-dynamic performance behaviours of a thrust ball bearing using a texture on its stationary race under severe starved lubricating condition for the longer duration of the test.

This paper presents the effects of swirl ratio on the reactivity controlled compression ignition engine parameters with a focus on NOx reduction. A numerical effort with a Eulerian-Lagrangian methodology is implemented to simulate the engine cycle. The accurate prediction of NOx is essential. Therefore, four different NOx mechanisms are compared and the 29 step-reaction mechanism is chosen for the current investigations due to its minimum error. It is found that the increase of swirl ratio expedites the combustion process. Therefore, the heat rejection to the cooling water during the combustion is decreased. The heat transfer after the end of combustion is also increased due to the enhancement of heat transfer coefficient. A tradeoff between these two opposite effects is achieved around the swirl ratio of 0.95–1.2 that the best efficiency and lowest NOx emission is achieved. It is also notable that at the minimum combustion duration, the average bulk temperature of engine cycle is minimized.

This research analyzes the influences of radiation heat transfer and Brownian movement on the thermal characteristics of nanofluid flow over an inclined step in the presence of an axial magnetic field. The Rosseland approximation is applied to simulate the divergence of radiative heat flux in the energy equation. The Al2O3–H2O and CuO–H2O nanofluids are considered as the working fluid. The $${\text{KKL}}$$ correlation is used for modeling the Brownian movement influence on the effective viscosity and thermal conductivity. The impacts of radiation parameter $$\left( {0 \le Rd \le 1} \right)$$, nanoparticles concentration $$\left( {0 \le \phi \le 0.04} \right)$$ and Lorentz force $$\left( {0 \le Ha \le 60} \right)$$ on temperature fields, mean bulk temperature and convective, radiative and total Nusselt numbers are examined with full details. The results show that the impact of CuO nanoparticles on the average of total heat transfer rates is greater that the influence of Al2O3 nanoparticles on them. Besides, the highest values of total heat transfer rates occur in the absence of magnetic field and for the highest values of $$Rd$$ and $$\phi$$ parameters.

The formulation of a hybrid numerical-semi-analytical method for cost-effective simulations of heat transfer in fields of vertical geothermal boreholes, in the presence of groundwater flow, is presented. An amalgamation of a co-located control-volume finite element method and a finite volume method is used to solve 1) a volume-averaged continuity and the Darcy-Brinkman-Frochheimer equations to obtain the distribution of the groundwater flow; and 2) an unsteady three-dimensional volume-averaged advection-conduction equation to calculate the related ground temperature distribution, assuming local thermodynamic equilibrium between the groundwater and the soil particles. The bulk temperature distribution of the working fluid (flowing inside the legs of a U-tube pipe inserted inside each borehole and kept in place by grout) and the related heat extraction (or addition) rate are obtained using a semi-analytical method to solve a quasi-steady quasi-one-dimensional model. The conditions of no-slip, impermeability, equality of temperature, and continuity of heat flux are used at the interface between each borehole and the groundwater-saturated soil in the borehole field. The proposed method is applied to test and demonstration problems to demonstrate its capabilities.

Purpose This paper aims to study forced convection in a double tube heat exchanger using nanofluids with constant and variable thermophysical properties. Design/methodology/approach The cold fluid was distilled water flowing in the annulus and the hot fluid was aluminum oxide/water nanofluid which flows in the inner tube. Thermal conductivity and viscosity were taken as variable thermophysical properties, and the results were compared against runs with constant values. Finite volume method was used for solving the governing equations. For distilled water, Re = 500 was used, while for nanofluid, nanoparticles volume fraction equal to 2.5-10 per cent and Re = 100-1,500 were used. Findings Heat transfer rate can be enhanced by increasing the volume fraction of nanoparticles and Reynolds number. Thermal efficiency is better with constant thermophysical characteristics and the average Nusselt number is better for variable characteristics. Originality/value Heat exchanger efficiency is evaluated by using distilled water and nanofluid bulk temperature, thermal efficiency and average and local Nusselt numbers for both variable and constant thermophysical characteristics.

Analytical expressions for the velocity and temperature profiles, bulk temperature and Nusselt numbers, in a fully-developed laminar Couette–Poiseuille flow between parallel plates of a power-law f...

[EN] In this study, real-time and in-situ permittivity measurements under intense microwave electromagnetic fields are proposed as a powerful technique for the study of microwave-enhanced thermal processes in materials. In order to draw reliable conclusions about the temperatures at which transformations occur, we address how to accurately measure the bulk temperature of the samples under microwave irradiation. A new temperature calibration method merging data from four independent techniques is developed to obtain the bulk temperature as a function of the surface temperature in thermal processes under microwave conditions. Additionally, other analysis techniques such as Differential Thermal Analysis (DTA) or Raman spectroscopy are correlated to dielectric permittivity measurements and the temperatures of thermal transitions observed using each technique are compared. Our findings reveal that the combination of all these procedures could help prove the existence of specific non-thermal microwave effects in a scientifically meaningful way., The authors wish to thank the project MAT2017-86450-C4-1-R.

There is lack of knowledge in assimilation of multi-sensor, multi-modal water temperature observations into hydrodynamic models of shallow rivers, specifically, (a) how does accuracy of shallow river model improve after assimilation of in-situ and remotely sensed temperature observations, and (b) how can data from disparate sensors and sources be assimilated into the prediction model without significant increase in computational burden. Multi-sensor, multi-modal observations used in this study are obtained from in-situ monitoring devices in the river with limited spatial coverage but dense temporal resolution, and from Landsat-7 satellite that has better spatial coverage but limited temporal coverage. Use of remotely-sensed observations from satellites poses the challenge that the physical region represented by satellite data does not directly correspond with the physical domain of the river simulated in hydrodynamic models. Satellites detects the skin water temperature, whereas numerical models estimate the bulk temperature in the surface layer that may be multiple meters in thickness. Furthermore, for rivers narrower than the resolution of satellite data, the temperature of each cell represents the weighted average temperature of land and water. These factors introduce biases into the updated numerical model, thereby impeding appropriate management of temperature, water quality, and aquatic ecology. We implemented an efficient ensemble Kalman filter method using Latin-hypercube sampling to assimilate multi-sensor water temperature observations into the hydrodynamic model of the Lower Klamath River located in northern California. Assimilation of remote sensing data from Landsat-7 improved the model prediction for the entire river. The average spatial error was reduced from 2.59 °C to 0.66 °C (i.e., 75% improvement). In-situ data assimilation reduced the error at the observation location, however, error in the water temperature predicted by the updated model reverted in less than two days to the same level as that of an un-updated model. On the other hand, it is not computationally efficient to assimilate all of the available data into the model as they become available. In order to overcome these challenges, in-situ data were adaptively assimilated into the model whenever the error exceeded a maximum allowable error. Adaptive assimilation of in-situ data for the Lower Klamath river application occurred one to three times per day, and reduced the average daily error up to 58% compared to assimilation of in-situ data only once each day.

Quenching heat transfer is of fundamental interest in cryogenic chilldown applications. Surface configuration can improve quenching heat transfer and clear understanding of the effect of different surface characteristics is necessary. In the present study, the effect of anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) surface on pool quenching is investigated. The AAO surface and other four types of surfaces are quenched in liquid nitrogen and a theoretical model is applied to further investigate the effect of surface thermal resistance. It is shown that the total chilldown time is decreased from 63.8 s on electropolishing surface to 33.4 s on the AAO surface. By comparisons with other surfaces, it is found that the effect of the AAO surface results from two aspects: surface thermal resistance and nanopore structure. For surface thermal resistance, it is indicated by the consistence of numerical and experimental results that the end of film boiling is resulted from the decrease of local surface temperature that is not high enough to sustain the local vapor film, even though the bulk temperature is still high. For the nanopore structure, it is theoretically estimated that the nanopores will be kept filled with vapor at the surface temperature higher than the critical pinning state temperature (94.4 K). This phenomenon of vapor-filled nanopores reduces the liquid–solid contact area and local vapor generation rate, resulting in a higher temperature of the Leidenfrost point (LFP) and lower heat flux in partial nucleate boiling regime. When the surface temperature drops below the critical pinning state temperature, liquid nitrogen infiltrates into the nanopores and a heat flux jump appears.

The laminar plasma jet is an effective tool of plasma technologies for material processing thanks to great values of bulk temperature and high penetration of a plasma stream. However, laminar stream formation in an axial jet plasmatron is connected with a number of difficulties caused by physical restrictions. Conditions of formation of a laminar stream at the exit from a plasmatron nozzle with interelectrode inserts are found when using the most widespread plasma-forming gases. With use of a method of universal characteristics of arc and heat-transfer model of arc of jet plasmatrons, calculation of characteristics of the arc compressed by walls of the discharge channel is carried out; the necessary arc compression ratio in the stable laminar stream mode and its extreme values taking into account the permissible thermal load on walls of the discharge channel in the arc stabilization zone are defined. It is shown that reduction of the diameter of the plasmatron discharge channel reducing diameter of the laminar plasma stream exhausting from a plasmatron nozzle reduces the permissible values of the arc compression ratio. Influence of the cooling mode of walls of the plasmatron arc channel formed by interelectrode inserts on the arc compression ratio at separate water cooling of each interelectrode insert and at their joint cooling is shown. All calculations were carried out for the values of gas consumption and discharge channel length meeting a basic condition of laminar stream formation of Re < 150. The arc current values necessary for a laminar plasma stream formation, depending on the discharge channel section and a plasma-forming gas consumption taking into account thermal properties of the gas environment, are determined. The method proposed in this article makes it possible to calculate an arc column temperature profile in the stabilization zone of a laminar plasmatron and can be used when developing plasmatrons with a stable laminar stream of set plasma-forming gas.