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Numerical investigation of oscillatory thermocapillary flows under zero gravity in a circular liquid film with concave free surfaces

Numerical investigation of oscillatory thermocapillary flows under zero gravity in a circular liquid film with concave free surfaces

Authors :
Yasunori Okano
Takuya Yamamoto
Youhei Takagi
Sadik Dost
Source :
Physics of Fluids. 28:032106
Publication Year :
2016
Publisher :
AIP Publishing, 2016.

Abstract

NASA astronaut Pettit has conducted thermocapillary flow experiments in water films suspended in a solid ring onboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2003 and 2011. In one of these experiments, an oscillatory thermocapillary flow was observed. The developed flow broke its symmetry along the centerline of the film. To the best of our knowledge, there are no studies on such oscillatory thermocapillary flows in thin films, and the flow-mechanism giving rise to such oscillatory flows is also not well understood. In order to shed light on the subject, we have carried out a numerical simulation study. The simulation results have shown that the water film geometry (film surface shape; being concave) is an important parameter and give rise to three oscillatory flow structures in the film, namely, a hydrothermal wave developing near the heated section, a symmetric oscillatory flow due to temperature variations, and a symmetry breaking flow due to the hydrodynamic instability along the free boundary layer ...

Details

ISSN :
10897666 and 10706631
Volume :
28
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Physics of Fluids
Accession number :
edsair.doi...........e3d31ffbbcec8a280cad2f8c8ddb041f
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4943246