The Surface Tension Driven Convection Experiment (STDCE) is a Space Transportation System flight experiment to study both transient and steady thermocapillary fluid flows aboard the USML-1 Spacelab mission planned for June, 1992. One of the components of data collected during the experiment is a video record of the flow field. This qualitative data is then quantified using an all electronic, two dimensional Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) technique called Particle Displacement Tracking (PDT) which uses a simple space domain particle tracking algorithm. Results using the ground-based STDCE hardware, with a radiant flux heating mode, and the PDT system are compared to numerical solutions obtained by solving the axisymmetric Navier Stokes equations with a deformable free surface. The PDT technique is successful in producing a velocity vector field and corresponding stream function from the raw video data which satisfactorily represents the physical flow. A numerical program is used to compute the velocity vector field and corresponding stream function under identical conditions. Both the PDT system and numerical results were compared to a streak photograph, used as a benchmark, with good correlation.
Ground-based PIV and numerical flow visualization results from the surface tension driven convection experiment
Erdgestützte PIV und numerische Flußvisualisierungsergebnisse eines oberflächenspannungsgetriebenen Konvektionsexperimentes
1991
13 Seiten, 10 Bilder, 1 Tabelle, 12 Quellen
Conference paper
English
Surface Tension Driven Convection Experiment
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