On-Board Experimental Study Of Bubble Thermocapillary Migration In A Recoverable Satellite

An on-board space experiment of bubble thermocapillary migration was performed in the Chinese 22nd recoverable satellite in 2005. Silicone oil of nominal viscosity 5cSt was used as the continuous phase in the experiment. Air bubbles were injected into the liquid in the same direction as the constant temperature gradient in the liquid. The velocities of bubbles were obtained by recording the paths of the bubbles. The results indicate that the scaled velocity of bubbles decreases with an increase of the Marangoni number extended to 9288, which agrees with the results of previous space experiments and numerical simulation. In addition, the interaction between two bubbles was also observed in the space experiment. The trajectories and the velocities of the bubbles were obtained. The two-bubble experiment results are also consistent with the theoretical analysis.

A Pressure-Correction Method And Its Applications On An Unstructured Chimera Grid

In this paper, an unstructured Chimera mesh method is used to compute incompressible flow around a rotating body. To implement the pressure correction algorithm on unstructured overlapping sub-grids, a novel interpolation scheme for pressure correction is proposed. This indirect interpolation scheme can ensure a tight coupling of pressure between sub-domains. A moving-mesh finite volume approach is used to treat the rotating sub-domain and the governing equations are formulated in an inertial reference frame. Since the mesh that surrounds the rotating body undergoes only solid body rotation and the background mesh remains stationary, no mesh deformation is encountered in the computation. As a benefit from the utilization of an inertial frame, tensorial transformation for velocity is not needed. Three numerical simulations are successfully performed. They include flow over a fixed circular cylinder, flow over a rotating circular cylinder and flow over a rotating elliptic cylinder. These numerical examples demonstrate the capability of the current scheme in handling moving boundaries. The numerical results are in good agreement with experimental and computational data in literature. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Reconsideration On The Role Of The Specific Heat Ratio In Arrhenius Law Applications

Arrhenius law implicates that only those molecules which possess the internal energy greater than the activation energy E-a can react. However, the internal energy will not be proportional to the gas temperature if the specific heat ratio gamma and the gas constant R vary during chemical reaction processes. The varying gamma may affect significantly the chemical reaction rate calculated with the Arrhenius law under the constant gamma assumption, which has been widely accepted in detonation and combustion simulations for many years. In this paper, the roles of variable gamma and R in Arrhenius law applications are reconsidered, and their effects on the chemical reaction rate are demonstrated by simulating one-dimensional C-J and two-dimensional cellular detonations. A new overall one-step detonation model with variable gamma and R is proposed to improve the Arrhenius law. Numerical experiments demonstrate that this improved Arrhenius law works well in predicting detonation phenomena with the numerical results being in good agreement with experimental data.

Short-and resonant-range interactions between scales in turbulence and their applications

Interactions between different scales in turbulence were studied starting from the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. The integral and differential formulae of the short-range viscous stresses, which express the short-range interactions between contiguous scales in turbulence, were given. A concept of the resonant-range interactions between extreme contiguous scales was introduced and the differential formula of the resonant-range viscous stresses was obtained. The short- and resonant-range viscous stresses were applied to deduce the large-eddy simulation (LES) equations as well as the multiscale equations, which are approximately closed and do not contain any empirical constants or relations. The properties and advantages of using the multiscale equations to compute turbulent flows were discussed. The short-range character of the interactions between the scales in turbulence means that the multiscale simulation is a very valuable technique for the calculation of turbulent flows. A few numerical examples were also given.

Evaluation of influence of multiple scattering effect in light-scattering-based applications

The extinction cross sections of a system containing two particles are calculated by the T-matrix method, and the results are compared with those of two single particles with single-scattering approximation. The necessity of the correction of the refractive indices of water and polystyrene for different incident wavelengths is particularly addressed in the calculation. By this means, the volume fractions allowed for certain accuracy requirements of single-scattering approximation in the light scattering experiment can be evaluated. The volume fractions calculated with corrected refractive indices are compared with those obtained with fixed refractive indices which have been rather commonly used, showing that fixed refractive indices may cause significant error in evaluating multiple scattering effect. The results also give a simple criterion for selecting the incident wavelength and particle size to avoid the 'blind zone' in the turbidity measurement, where the turbidity change is insensitive to aggregation of two particles.

Deflections and curvatures of a film-substrate structure with the presence of gradient stress in MEMS applications

The close form solutions of deflections and curvatures for a film-substrate composite structure with the presence of gradient stress are derived. With the definition of more precise kinematic assumption, the effect of axial loading due to residual gradient stress is incorporated in the governing equation. The curvature of film-substrate with the presence of gradient stress is shown to be nonuniform when the axial loading is nonzero. When the axial loading is zero, the curvature expressions of some structures derived in this paper recover the previous ones which assume the uniform curvature. Because residual gradient stress results in both moment and axial loading inside the film-substrate composite structure, measuring both the deflection and curvature is proposed as a safe way to uniquely determine the residual stress state inside a film-substrate composite structure with the presence of gradient stress.