Candidate hypotheses of the version 6 CHF breakdown: stage one pre-registration (frozen)
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Stage one of a two-stage pre-registration that turns five candidate hypotheses from the information-only breakdown of the version 6 critical heat flux blind test into pass-or-fail tests on a new blind set, comparing version 6 with the 2006 CHF look-up table: H-a (the table predicts low at or below 1.00 MPa), H-b (version 6 has the lower relative RMS error there), H-d (the table has the lower relative RMS error at or above 3.00 MPa), H-e (version 6 predicts more than 10% high more often at low pressure and exit quality below 0.66) and H-f (version 6's prediction moves more than the table's when the heated length changes by 4.2%). The sixth candidate, on Ruan's way of taking CHF, stays a stated suspicion. The record fixes the scoring, the conditions-only blind search, the exclusion of every laboratory seen by any version and of the 2006 table's data sources, and the timing; it was frozen before the search as the exact bytes of its draft 0.15. Addendum A1 (revision 4), written before any article was requested, records that a set voided by a parse-record mismatch is void under the standing rule too, and that three articles with tubes below 3 mm are reserved for a separate small-tube test. The search found three qualifying articles, now being obtained sealed; stage two is frozen before any run-table value is read. Nothing here supports any use of these methods in design, safety or licensing. The candidates rest on the version 6 test and its breakdown, whose sources include material obtained by interlibrary loan. Source documents were obtained through the Interlibrary Loan service of J.Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, by the author as an ECU student. Declaration on the use of artificial intelligence. The candidate hypotheses, the decisions recorded as the author's and the interpretation are the author's. An AI assistant (Claude, Anthropic) was used substantially as a tool under the author's direction for drafting, searching and checking by separate agents. The author takes full responsibility for the content.
Author: Guarino, Brian
Language: English
Subfield: Mechanical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225461348