Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Large Length Scale Capillary Fluidics: From Jumping Bubbles To Drinking In Space, Andrew Paul Wollman
Large Length Scale Capillary Fluidics: From Jumping Bubbles To Drinking In Space, Andrew Paul Wollman
Dissertations and Theses
In orbit, finding the "bottom" of your coffee cup is a non-trivial task. Subtle forces often masked by gravity influence the containment and transport of fluids aboard spacecraft, often in surprising non-intuitive ways. Terrestrial experience with capillary forces is typically relegated to the micro-scale, but engineering community exposure to large length scale capillary fluidics critical to spacecraft fluid management design is low indeed. Low-cost drop towers and fast-to-flight International Space Station (ISS) experiments are increasing designer exposure to this fresh field of study. This work first provides a wide variety of drop tower tests that demonstrate fundamental and applied capillary …
Capillary Phenomena: Investigations In Compressed Bubble Migration, Geometric Wetting, And Blade-Bound Droplet Stability, William Henry Blackmore
Capillary Phenomena: Investigations In Compressed Bubble Migration, Geometric Wetting, And Blade-Bound Droplet Stability, William Henry Blackmore
Dissertations and Theses
Capillary flows continue to be important in numerous spacecraft systems where the effective magnitude of the gravity vector is approximately one millionth that of normal Earth gravity. Due to the free fall state of orbiting spacecraft, the effects of capillarity on the fluid systems onboard can dominate the fluid behavior over large length scales. In this research three investigations are pursued where the unique interplay between surface tension forces, wetting characteristics, and system geometry control the fluid behavior, whether in large systems aboard spacecraft, or micro-scale systems on Earth. First, efforts in support of two International Space Station (ISS) experiments …