Numerical Simulation of Condensation of Bubbles under Microgravity Conditions by Moving Mesh Method in the Double-staggered Grid

A numerical 2D method for simulation of two-phase flows including phase change under microgravity conditions is presented in this paper, with a level set method being coupled with the moving mesh method in the double-staggered grid systems. When the grid lines bend very much in a curvilinear grid, great errors may be generated by using the collocated grid or the staggered grid. So the double-staggered grid was adopted in this paper. The level set method is used to track the liquid–vapor interface. The numerical analysis is fulfilled by solving the Navier–Stokes equations using the SIMPLER method, and the surface tension force is modeled by a continuum surface force approximation. A comparison of the numerical results obtained with different numerical strategies shows that the double-staggered grid moving-mesh method presented in this paper is more accurate than that used previously in the collocated grid system. Based on the method presented in this paper, the condensation of a single bubble in the cold water under different level of gravity is simulated. The results show that the condensation process under the normal gravity condition is different from the condensation process under microgravity conditions. The whole condensation time is much longer under the normal gravity than under the microgravity conditions.     

Experimental Study of Nucleate Pool Boiling of FC-72 on Smooth Surface under Microgravity

Experiments of highly subcooled nucleate pool boiling of FC-72 with dissolved air were studied both in short-term microgravity condition utilizing the drop tower Beijing and in normal gravity conditions. The bubble behavior and heat transfer of air-dissolved FC-72 on a small scale silicon chip (10 × 10 × 0.5 mm³) were obtained at the bulk liquid subcooling of 41 K and nominal pressure of 102 kPa. The boiling heat transfer performance in low heat flux region in microgravity is similar to that in normal gravity condition, while vapor bubbles increase in size but little coalescence occurs among bubbles, and then forms a large bubble remains attached to the heater surface during the whole microgravity period. Thermocapillary convection may be an important mechanism of boiling heat transfer in this case. With further increasing in heat flux to the fully developed nucleate boiling region, the vapor bubbles number as well as their size significantly increase in microgravity. Rapid coalescence occurs among adjacent bubbles and then the coalesced large bubble can depart from the heating surface during the microgravity period. The reason of the large bubble departure is mainly attributed to the momentum effects caused by the coalescence of small bubbles with the large one. Hence, the steady-state pool boiling can still be obtained in microgravity. In the high heat flux regime near the critical heat flux, significant deterioration of heat transfer was observed, and a large coalesced bubble forms quickly and almost covers the whole heater surface, leading to the occurrence of the critical heat flux in microgravity condition.     

Numerical Investigation on Turbulence and Bubbles Distribution in Bubbly Flow Under Normal Gravity and Microgravity Conditions

Two-phase flows of gas and liquid are increasingly paid much attention to space application due to excellent properties of heat and mass transfer, so it is very meaningful to develop studies on them in microgravity. In this paper, gas-phase distribution and turbulence characteristics of bubbly flow in normal gravity and microgravity were investigated in detail by using Euler–Lagrange two-way model. The liquid-phase velocity field was solved by using direct numerical simulations (DNS) in Euler frame of reference, and the bubble motion was tracked by using Newtonian motion equations that took into account interphase interaction forces including drag force, shear lift force, wall lift force, virtual mass force and inertia force, etc. in Lagrange frame of reference. The coupling between gas–liquid phases was made with regarding interphase forces as a momentum source term in the momentum equation of the liquid phase. Under the normal gravity condition, a great number of bubbles accumulate near the walls under the influence of the shear lift force, and addition of bubbles reduces turbulence of the liquid phase. Different from the normal gravity condition, in microgravity, an overwhelming majority of bubbles migrate towards the centre of the channel driven by the pressure gradient force, and bubbles have little effect on the turbulence of the liquid phase.     

Experimental Study of Subcooled Flow Boiling Heat Transfer on a Smooth Surface in Short-Term Microgravity

The flow boiling heat transfer characteristics of subcooled air-dissolved FC-72 on a smooth surface (chip S) were studied in microgravity by utilizing the drop tower facility in Beijing. The heater, with dimensions of 40 × 10 × 0.5 mm³ (length × width × thickness), was combined with two silicon chips with the dimensions of 20 × 10 × 0.5 mm³. High-speed visualization was used to supplement observation in the heat transfer and vapor-liquid two-phase flow characteristics. In the low and moderate heat fluxes region, the flow boiling of chip S at inlet velocity V =?0.5 m/s shows almost the same regulations as that in pool boiling. All the wall temperatures at different positions along the heater in microgravity are slightly lower than that in normal gravity, which indicates slight heat transfer enhancement. However, in the high heat flux region, the pool boiling of chip S shows much evident deterioration of heat transfer compared with that of flow boiling in microgravity. Moreover, the bubbles of flow boiling in microgravity become larger than that in normal gravity due to the lack of buoyancy Although the difference of the void fraction in x-y plain becomes larger with increasing heat flux under different gravity levels, it shows nearly no effect on heat transfer performance except for critical heat flux (CHF). Once the void fraction in y-z plain at the end of the heater equals 1, the vapor blanket will be formed quickly and transmit from downstream to upstream along the heater, and CHF occurs. Thus, the height of channel is an important parameter to determine CHF in microgravity at a fixed velocity. The flow boiling of chip S at inlet velocity V =?0.5 m/s shows higher CHF than that of pool boiling because of the inertia force, and the CHF under microgravity is about 78–92% of that in normal gravity.     

Two-phase Flow in Fuel Cells in Short-term Microgravity Condition

A visual observation of liquid–gas two-phase flow in anode channels of a direct methanol proton exchange membrane fuel cells in microgravity has been carried out in a drop tower. The anode flow bed consisted of 2 manifolds and 11 parallel straight channels. The length, width and depth of single channel with rectangular cross section was 48.0 mm, 2.5 mm and 2.0 mm, respectively. The experimental results indicated that the size of bubbles in microgravity condition is bigger than that in normal gravity. The longer the time, the bigger the bubbles. The velocity of bubbles rising is slower than that in normal gravity because buoyancy lift is very weak in microgravity. The flow pattern in anode channels could change from bubbly flow in normal gravity to slug flow in microgravity. The gas slugs blocked supply of reactants from channels to anode catalyst layer through gas diffusion layer. When the weakened mass transfer causes concentration polarization, the output performance of fuel cells declines.     

Bubble Dynamics in Nucleate Pool Boiling on Thin Wires in Microgravity

A temperature-controlled pool boiling (TCPB) device has been developed to study the bubble behavior and heat transfer in pool boiling phenomenon both in normal gravity and in microgravity. A thin platinum wire of 60 μm in diameter and 30 mm in length is simultaneously used as heater and thermometer. The fluid is R113 at 0.1 MPa and subcooled by 26°C nominally for all cases. Three modes of heat transfer, namely single-phase natural convection, nucleate boiling, and two-mode transition boiling, are observed in the experiment both in microgravity aboard the 22nd Chinese recoverable satellite and in normal gravity on the ground before and after the space flight. Dynamic behaviors of vapor bubbles observed in these experiments are reported and analyzed in the present paper. In the regime of fully developed nucleate boiling, the interface oscillation due to coalescence of adjacent tiny bubbles is the primary reason of the departure of bubbles in microgravity. On the contrary, in the discrete bubble regime, it’s observed that there exist three critical bubble diameters in microgravity, dividing the whole range of the observed bubbles into four regimes. Firstly, tiny bubbles are continually forming and growing on the heating surface before departing slowly from the wire when their sizes exceed some value of the order of 10⁻¹ mm. The bigger bubbles with about several millimeters in diameter stay on the wire, oscillate along the wire, and coalesce with adjacent bubbles. The biggest bubble with diameter of the order of 10 mm, which was formed immediately after the onset of boiling, stays continuously on the wire and swallows continually up adjacent small bubbles until its size exceeds another critical value. The same behavior of tiny bubbles can also be observed in normal gravity, while the others are observed only in microgravity. Considering the Marangoni effect, a mechanistic model about bubble departure is presented to reveal the mechanism underlying this phenomenon. The predictions are qualitatively consistent with the experimental observations.     

Pool boiling heat transfer in microgravity

A temperature-controlled pool boiling (TCPB) device has been developed to study the bubble behaviors and heat transfer in pool boiling phenomenon both in normal gravity and in microgravity. The results on heat transfer and bubble dynamic behavior in the experiments aboard the 22^nd Chinese recoverable satellite and those in normal gravity before and after the flight experiment are reported and discussed in the present paper. The onset-boiling temperature is independent, or at least, dependent much weakly on gravity. Heat transfer of nucleate boiling in microgravity is slightly enhanced, while the scale of CHF with gravity is contrary to the traditional viewpoint and can be predicted by LD-Zuber correlation. A forward-and-backward lateral motion of vapor bubbles is observed along the wire before their departure from the wire in microgravity, while three critical bubble diameters divide the observed vapor bubbles into four regions in microgravity. These distinctive bubble behavior can be interpreted by Marangoni effects.     

Pool Boiling in Microgravity: Recent Results and Perspectives for the Project DEPA-SJ10

Two research projects on pool boiling in microgravity have been conducted aboard the Chinese recoverable satellites. Ground-based experiments have also been performed both in normal gravity and in short-term microgravity in the Drop Tower Beijing. Steady boiling of R113 on thin platinum wires was studied with a temperature-controlled heating method, while quasi-steady boiling of FC-72 on a plane plate was investigated with an exponentially increasing heating voltage. In the first case, slight enhancement of heat transfer is observed in microgravity, while diminution is evident for high heat flux in the second one. Lateral motions of bubbles on the heaters are observed before their departure in microgravity. The surface oscillation of the merged bubbles due to lateral coalescence between adjacent bubbles drives it to detach from the heaters. The Marangoni effect on the bubble behavior is also discussed. The perspectives for a new project DEPA-SJ10, which has been planned to be flown aboard the Chinese recoverable satellite SJ-10 in the future, are also presented.     

Dynamics for Droplets in Normal Gravity and Microgravity

A numerical study has been carried out to investigate the deformation dynamics of droplets under normal gravity and the thermocapillary migration of droplets under microgravity. The Navier–Stokes equations coupled with the energy conservation equation are solved on a staggered grid by the method of lines, and the mass conserving level set method is used to predict the surface deformation of the droplet. The simulation for the falling droplet in the air under normal gravity shows that the value of Weber number affects mainly the deformation of the droplet, while the value of Reynolds number has direct impact on the falling velocity of the droplet. From the simulation for the droplet thermocapillary migration and lateral oscillation under microgravity, it is found that the value of Marangoni number has obvious effects on the moving velocity and temperature distribution of the droplet.     

A numerical study of periodic slug flow at zero gravity and normal gravity

This paper reports numerical simulations of slug flow at zero and normal gravity. The particular experimental results chosen for validation were obtained at microgravity under conditions which resulted in evenly-spaced and evenly-sized Taylor bubbles facilitating a simulation with periodic boundary conditions. The numerical technique was a free-surface method which explicitly tracked the motion of the gas-liquid interface using a volume-of-fluid specification and a finite volume discretisation of the solution domain. The large scale features of the bubble such as the classic bullet-shaped nose were well predicted by the model. Unsteady features of the bubble shape such as waves in the film and fluctuations of the bottom surface were also predicted but are harder to compare quantitatively to the experiments. The velocity field predictions reveal several interesting features of the flow. When viewed by an observer moving with the bubbles, the liquid slug is dominated by a large recirculating region with the flow travelling from the leading to the trailing bubble along the tube centreline. In this frame of reference, the near-wall region features a jet of fluid issuing from the film of the leading bubble which entrains fluid in the slug. As the film of the trailing bubble begins to form, the entrained fluid must be ejected since the flowrate in the film of each bubble must be the same. It appears to be this process that drives the main recirculation.     

Design of an Experiment for the Study of Bubble Jet Interactions in Microgravity

A new experimental setup for the study of bubble coalescence and bubble jet interactions in microgravity conditions is presented. The section consists of a cavity full of liquid containing two bubble injectors whose separation distance and relative orientation angle can be controlled. Injection of bubbles is based on the generation of a slug flow in a capillary T-junction, which allows a control of bubble size and velocity by means of liquid and gas flow rates. Individual and collective behaviour of bubbles injected in the cavity has been studied. On ground results on the individual trajectories, maximum distance reached, and the delimitation between turbulence and buoyancy regions are presented. The influence on these results of the inclination angle of one injector with respect to gravity has also been considered. A good knowledge of bubble jets behaviour in microgravity will enhance the development of space technologies based on two-phase systems.     

Iron Burning in Pressurised Oxygen Under Microgravity Conditions

An investigation of cylindrical iron rods burning in pressurised oxygen under microgravity conditions is presented. It has been shown that, under similar experimental conditions, the melting rate of a burning, cylindrical iron rod is higher in microgravity than in normal gravity by a factor of 1.8 ± 0.3. This paper presents microanalysis of quenched samples obtained in a microgravity environment in a 2.0 s duration drop tower facility in Brisbane, Australia. These images indicate that the solid/liquid interface is highly convex in reduced gravity, compared to the planar geometry typically observed in normal gravity, which increases the contact area between liquid and solid phases by a factor of 1.7 ± 0.1. Thus, there is good agreement between the proportional increase in solid/liquid interface surface area and melting rate in microgravity. This indicates that the cause of the increased melting rates for cylindrical iron rods burning in microgravity is altered interfacial geometry at the solid/liquid interface.     

Effects of Reduced Gravity Conditions on Bubble Dispersion Characteristics in the Bubble Column

Bubble-liquid turbulent flow has an excellent heat and mass transfer behaviors than single gas or liquid flow. In order to analyze the effects of normal and reduced gravity on cold bubble-liquid two-phase turbulent flow in bubble column a second-order moment cold bubble-liquid two-phase turbulent model was developed to disclose the bubble dispersion characteristics. Under the reduced gravity condition, volume fraction caused by the decrease of buoyance force is larger than normal gravity level due to bigger bubble solid volume. In addition, bubble frequency is also decreased by in decrease of buoyance force. Normal and shear stresses have strongly anisotropic characteristics at every directions and have larger values under normal gravity than reduced gravity. The liquid turbulent kinetic energy has the two-peak bimodal distribution and weaker than bubble turbulent kinetic energy with one peak unimodal, which is caused by vigorous wake fluctuations. The correlation of fluctuation velocities between bubble and liquid has clearly anisotropic behaviors Under reduced gravity, the bubble motion has a little impact on liquid turbulent flow caused by slight buoyancy force, however, it will greatly reduce the liquid turbulent intensity due to energy cascade transport, which was transformed into bubbles or dissipated by interface friction. Bubble formation and detachment mechanisms affected by gravity conditions lead to the different levels of bubble dispersion distributions.     

Convective Boiling Between 2D Plates: Microgravity Influence on Bubble Growth and Detachment

The experiment detailed in this paper presents results obtained on the nucleation, growth and detachment of HFE-7100 confined vapour bubbles. Bubbles are created on an artificial nucleation site between two-dimensional plates under terrestrial and microgravity conditions. The experiments are performed by varying the shear flow by changing the convective mass flow rate, and varying the bubble nucleation rate by changing the heat flux supplied. The experiments are performed under normal (1 g) and reduced gravity (μg). The distance between the plates is equal to 1 mm. The results of these experiments are related to the detachment diameters of bubbles on the single artificial nucleation site and to the associated effects on the heat transfer by the confinement influence. The experimental device allows the observation of the flow using both visible video camera and infrared video camera. Here, we present the results obtained concerning the influence of gravity on the bubble detachment diameter and the images of 2D bubbles obtained in microgravity by means of an infrared camera. The following parameters: nucleation site surface temperature, bubble detachment diameter and bubble nucleation frequency evidence modifications due to microgravity.     

The influence of film structure on the interfacial friction in annular two-phase flow under microgravity and normal gravity conditions

Results for the interfacial friction factor and relative interfacial roughness on the gas-liquid interface are reported for an air-water annular flow in a small inner diameter tube (9.53 mm i.d.). The film structure was obtained through processing the time trace signal of film thickness measurements using conductance probes. The interfacial friction factor and the wave height were altered through changing the gravity level and gas Reynolds number. It was found that the wave height decreased with increasing the gas Reynolds number. The wave height in microgravity is less than half of that in normal gravity, while the friction factor was about 10% smaller in microgravity than that in normal gravity. It was shown that the annular two-phase flow friction factor decreased less dramatically as the relative interfacial roughness decreased compared to the single-phase case. It is interesting to note that the interfacial shear stress values at microgravity were very close (or even larger than) those at normal gravity. This was attributed to the thicker substrate at microgravity.     

Particle accumulation structures in time-dependent thermocapillary flow in a liquid bridge under microgravity

The formation of a dynamic spiral string of particles with larger density than the fluid was investigated for time-dependent thermocapillary flow in liquid bridges under various gravity conditions including microgravity. The dynamic spiral string forms after approximately 20–60 oscillation periods from the homogeneous dilute particle suspension. It was found that the action of gravity is not decisive in the process of the particle accumulation structure (PAS) but gravity influences the flow field for PAS-formation. We could realize and observe PAS with modal structure m=3 under μ-g but modal structure m=2 occurred only during a transient of the operating parameters in an aspect ratio-range different from that under normal gravity. The correlation of the optically observed PAS structure with the temperature structure of the azimuthally rotating hydrothermal wave on the free surface is the same under microgravity as under normal gravity indicating that PAS is a pure Marangoni effect.     

Influence of Bond Number on Behaviors of Liquid Drops Deposited onto Solid Substrates

The problem of spreading behaviors of pendant and sessile drops was studied experimentally and numerically under the action of gravity force and surface tension. Bond number was considered to be a main factor of the influence on shape behaviors of liquid drops. This study was performed in the framework of an experimental investigation of drop behaviors in microgravity onboard a Chinese satellite in future. The experiments were carried out in the Drop Tower of Beijing, which could supply about 3.6?s of microgravity (free-fall) time. The surface shape change of liquid drops was investigated and the contact angle variety in sessile and pendant drops were measured from normal gravity to microgravity. A sharp decrease and oscillatory variation of the contact angle for both sessile and pendant drops were found with the sudden decrease of Bond number. The succedent comparison between experimental and numerical results suggests that Bond number has a significant influence on the drop contact angle. Additionally, the drop shapes and the bulk flows inside sessile and pendant drops were analyzed numerically, and it was found that the bulk flows could affect the free-surface shape of liquid drops apparently. Comparison of the moving velocity of contact line between sessile and pendant drops indicated that the pendant drops had a faster response to Bond number.     

A Six-DOF Buoyancy Tank Microgravity Test Bed with Active Drag Compensation

Ground experiment under microgravity is very essential because it can verify the space enabling technologies before applied in space missions. In this paper, a novel ground experiment system that can provide long duration, large scale and high microgravity level for the six degree of freedom (DOF) spacecraft trajectory tracking is presented. In which, the most gravity of the test body is balanced by the buoyancy, and the small residual gravity is offset by the electromagnetic force. Because the electromagnetic force on the test body can be adjusted in the electromagnetic system, it can significantly simplify the balancing process using the proposed microgravity test bed compared to the neutral buoyance system. Besides, a novel compensation control system based on the active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) method is developed to estimate and compensate the water resistance online, in order to improve the fidelity of the ground experiment. A six-DOF trajectory tracking in the microgravity system is applied to testify the efficiency of the proposed compensation controller, and the experimental simulation results are compared to that obtained using the classic proportional-integral-derivative (PID) method. The simulation results demonstrated that, for the six-DOF motion ground experiment, the microgravity level can reach to 5 × 10^?4 g. And, because the water resistance has been estimated and compensated, the performance of the presented controller is much better than the PID controller. The presented ground microgravity system can be applied in on-orbit service and other related technologies in future.     

Two-phase bubbly flows in microgravity: Some open questions

Several studies on gas-liquid pipe flows in micro gravity have been performed. They were motivated by the technical problems arising in the design of the thermohydraulic loops for the space applications. Most of the studies were focused on the determination of the flow pattern, wall shear stress, heat transfer and phase fraction and provided many empirical correlations. Unfortunately some basic mechanism are not yet well understood in micro gravity. For example the transition from bubbly to slug flow is well predicted by a critical value of the void fraction depending on an Ohnesorge number, but the criteria of transition cannot take into account the pipe length and the bubble size at the pipe inlet. To improve this criteria, a physical model of bubble coalescence in turbulent flow is used to predict the bubble size evolution along the pipe in micro gravity, but it is still limited to bubble smaller than the pipe diameter and should be extended to larger bubbles to predict the transition to slug flow. Another example concerns the radial distribution of the bubbles in pipe flow, which control the wall heat and momentum transfers. This distribution is very sensitive to gravity. On earth it is mainly controlled by the action of the lift force due to the bubble drift velocity. In micro gravity in absence of bubble drift, the bubbles are dispersed by the turbulence of the liquid and the classical model fails in the prediction of the bubble distribution. The first results of experiments and numerical simulations on isolated bubbles in normal and micro gravity conditions are presented. They should allow in the future improving the modelling of the turbulent bubbly flow in micro gravity but also on earth.     

Flow physics of upward cocurrent gas-liquid annular flow in a vertical small diameter tube

In this paper, a steady RNG k-ε model, in conjunction with enhanced wall treatment method, was applied to the gas core in order to simulate the flow physics of annular two-phase flow. The model incorporated a physical model of wave characteristics and included the liquid entrainment influence on the flow. Based on the simulation results, flow features in the gas core were quantitatively presented and a model of the liquid entrainment mechanism was proposed. In addition, a parametric study was conducted to determine the impact of changing wave velocity, pressure, and gravitational force on the liquid film flow. The results were validated using a large set of experimental data at normal and microgravity conditions. Also, the law of the wall was applied to previously-collected experimental data. Analysis yielded different flow features of the liquid film at microgravity and normal gravity conditions.