The present study focuses on thermocapillary convection in liquid bridges of high-Prandtl-number fluid (5 cSt silicone oil) under microgravity environment and varying ambient air conditions. The geometry has a cylindrical liquid bridge surrounded by ambient air and is coaxially placed between two differentially heated rods of the same diameter. The commercial software ANSYS Fluent 16.0, based on the finite volume method, is used to solve the governing equations in both the liquid and air domains. An axisymmetric computation is carried out in the liquid bridge by varying control parameters such as the temperature difference between the ends, the ambient air temperature, and the velocity of the ambient air. For passive ambient air around a liquid bridge, the effect of varying the air temperature is considered on the surface tension gradient along the interface, causing thermocapillary flow from the hot to the cold end. To account for the effect of ambient air motion, the velocity values of the axial airstream for codirected and counterdirected flows are chosen to be less than the Marangoni velocity. The study confirms that the percentage change in the maximum local surface velocity near hot corner is found to be around 20% due to the effect of the ambient air velocity as compared to that of stationary air.
Effect of Ambient Conditions on Flow and Heat Transfer in a Liquid Bridge
Journal of Thermophysics and Heat Transfer ; 32 , 2 ; 380-391
2017-12-29
12 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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