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Full-Text Articles in Physics

The Role Of Surface Vorticity During Unsteady Separation, Matthew Scott Melius, Karen Mulleners, Raul Bayoan Cal Apr 2018

The Role Of Surface Vorticity During Unsteady Separation, Matthew Scott Melius, Karen Mulleners, Raul Bayoan Cal

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Unsteady flow separation in rotationally augmented flow fields plays a significant role in a variety of fundamental flows. Through the use of time-resolved particle image velocimetry, vorticity accumulation and vortex shedding during unsteady separation over a three-dimensional airfoil are examined. The results of the study describe the critical role of surface vorticity accumulation during unsteady separation and reattachment. Through evaluation of the unsteady characteristics of the shear layer, it is demonstrated that the buildup and shedding of surface vorticity directly influence the dynamic changes of the separation point location. The quantitative characterization of surface vorticity and shear layer stability enables …


Puddle Jumping: Spontaneous Ejection Of Large Liquid Droplets From Hydrophobic Surfaces During Drop Tower Tests, Babek Attari, Mark M. Weislogel, Andrew Paul Wollman, Yongkang Chen, Trevor Snyder Oct 2016

Puddle Jumping: Spontaneous Ejection Of Large Liquid Droplets From Hydrophobic Surfaces During Drop Tower Tests, Babek Attari, Mark M. Weislogel, Andrew Paul Wollman, Yongkang Chen, Trevor Snyder

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Large droplets and puddles jump spontaneously from sufficiently hydrophobicsurfaces during routine drop tower tests. The simple low-cost passive mechanism can in turn be used as an experimental device to investigate dynamic droplet phenomena for drops up to 104 times larger than their normal terrestrial counterparts. We provide and/or confirm quick and qualitative design guides for such “drop shooters” as employed in drop tower tests including relationships to predict droplet ejection durations and velocities as functions of drop volume, surface texture, surface contour, wettability pattern, and fluid properties including contact angle. The latter is determined via profile image comparisons with numerical …


More Investigations In Capillary Fluidics Using A Drop Tower, Andrew Paul Wollman, Mark M. Weislogel, Brentley M. Wiles, Donald Pettit, Trevor Snyder Mar 2016

More Investigations In Capillary Fluidics Using A Drop Tower, Andrew Paul Wollman, Mark M. Weislogel, Brentley M. Wiles, Donald Pettit, Trevor Snyder

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A variety of contemplative demonstrations concerning intermediate-to-large length scale capillary fluidic phenomena were made possible by the brief weightless environment of a drop tower (Wollman and Weislogel in Exp Fluids 54(4):1, 2013). In that work, capillarity-driven flows leading to unique spontaneous droplet ejections, bubble ingestions, and multiphase flows were introduced and discussed. Such efforts are continued herein. The spontaneous droplet ejection phenomena (auto-ejection) is reviewed and demonstrated on earth as well as aboard the International Space Station. This technique is then applied to novel low-g droplet combustion where soot tube structures are created in the wakes of burning drops. …


Complex Capillary Fluidic Phenomena For Passive Control Of Liquids In Low-Gravity Environments, Logan Torres Jan 2016

Complex Capillary Fluidic Phenomena For Passive Control Of Liquids In Low-Gravity Environments, Logan Torres

Undergraduate Research & Mentoring Program

In an effort to further apply the recent results of puddle jumping research, we seek to expand the oblique droplet impact studies of others by exploiting large liquid droplets in the near weightless environment of a drop tower. By using the spontaneous puddle jump mechanism, droplets of volumes 1 mL ≤ V ≤ 3 mL with corresponding Weber numbers of We ≈ 1 are impinged on surfaces inclined in the range 40° ≤ α ≤ 80° (measured from the horizontal plane). Impact surface wetting characteristics exhibit static contact angles θstatic = 165 ± 5°. All impacts result in complete rebound. …


A Mean Curvature Model For Capillary Flows In Asymmetric Containers And Conduits, Yongkang Chen, Noël Tavan, Mark M. Weislogel Aug 2012

A Mean Curvature Model For Capillary Flows In Asymmetric Containers And Conduits, Yongkang Chen, Noël Tavan, Mark M. Weislogel

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Capillarity-driven flows resulting from critical geometric wetting criterion are observed to yield significant shifts of the bulk fluid from one side of the container to the other during "zero gravity" experiments. For wetting fluids, such bulk shift flows consist of advancing and receding menisci sometimes separated by secondary capillary flows such as rivulet-like flows along gaps. Here we study the mean curvature of an advancing meniscus in hopes of approximating a critical boundary condition for fluid dynamics solutions. It is found that the bulk shift flows behave as if the bulk menisci are either “connected” or "disconnected." For the connected …


Compound Capillary Rise, Mark M. Weislogel Jan 2012

Compound Capillary Rise, Mark M. Weislogel

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Irregular conduits, complex surfaces, and porous media often manifest more than one geometric wetting condition for spontaneous capillary flows. As a result, different regions of the flow exhibit different rates of flow, all the while sharing common dynamical capillary pressure boundary conditions. The classic problem of sudden capillary rise in tubes with interior corners is revisited from this perspective and solved numerically in the self-similar visco-capillary limit à laLucas–Washburn. Useful closed-form analytical solutions are obtained in asymptotic limits appropriate for many practical flows in conduits containing one or more interior corner. The critically wetted corners imbibe fluid away from …


Nonlinear Ordinary Differential Equations In Fluid Dynamics, John D. Ramshaw Dec 2011

Nonlinear Ordinary Differential Equations In Fluid Dynamics, John D. Ramshaw

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The equivalence between nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and linear partial differential equations (PDEs) was recently revisited by Smith, who used the equivalence to transform the ODEs of Newtonian dynamics into equivalent PDEs, from which analytical solutions to several simple dynamical problems were derived. We show how this equivalence can be used to derive a variety of exact solutions to the PDEs describing advection in fluid dynamics in terms of solutions to the equivalent ODEs for the trajectories of Lagrangian fluid particles. The PDEs that we consider describe the time evolution of non-diffusive scalars, conserved densities, and Lagrangian surfaces advected …


Whispering-Gallery Acoustic Sensing: Characterization Of Mesoscopic Films And Scanning Probe Microscopy Applications, Andres H. La Rosa, Nan Li, Rodolfo Fernandez, Xiaohua Wang, Richard Nordstrom, S. K. Padigi Sep 2011

Whispering-Gallery Acoustic Sensing: Characterization Of Mesoscopic Films And Scanning Probe Microscopy Applications, Andres H. La Rosa, Nan Li, Rodolfo Fernandez, Xiaohua Wang, Richard Nordstrom, S. K. Padigi

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Full understanding of the physics underlying the striking changes in viscoelasticity, relaxation time, and phase transitions that mesoscopic fluid-like films undergo at solid-liquid interfaces, or under confinement between two sliding solid boundaries, constitutes one of the major challenges in condensed matter physics. Their role in the imaging process of solid substrates by scanning probe microscopy (SPM) is also currently controversial. Aiming at improving the reliability and versatility of instrumentation dedicated to characterize mesoscopic films, a noninvasive whispering-gallery acoustic sensing (WGAS) technique is introduced; its application as feedback control in SPM is also demonstrated. To illustrate its working principle and potential …


Gravity Effects On Capillary Flows In Sharp Corners, Enrique Ramé, Mark M. Weislogel Apr 2009

Gravity Effects On Capillary Flows In Sharp Corners, Enrique Ramé, Mark M. Weislogel

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

We analyze the effect of gravity on capillary flows in sharp corners. We consider gravity perpendicular and parallel to the channel axis. We analyze both steady and unsteady flows. In the steady analysis the main result is a closed form expression for the flow rate as a function of the two gravity components. Good agreement with steady experiments is offered as support of the model. The unsteady analysis is restricted to “small” values of the two gravity parameters and is accomplished using a similarity formulation. The similarity coefficients of the gravity corrections are fully determined by the coefficients of the …


Dynamical Evolution Of Volume Fractions In Multipressure Multiphase Flow Models, C. H. Chang, John D. Ramshaw Jun 2008

Dynamical Evolution Of Volume Fractions In Multipressure Multiphase Flow Models, C. H. Chang, John D. Ramshaw

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Compared to single-pressure models, multipressure multiphase flow models require additional closure relations to determine the individual pressures of the different phases. These relations are often taken to be evolution equations for the volume fractions. We present a rigorous theoretical framework for constructing such equations for compressible multiphase mixtures in terms of submodels for the relative volumetric expansion rates ∆Ei of the phases. These quantities are essentially the rates at which the phases dynamically expand or contract in response to pressure differences, and represent the general tendency of the volume fractions to relax toward values that produce local pressure equilibrium. We …


Capillary-Driven Flows Along Rounded Interior Corners, Yongkang Chen, Mark M. Weislogel, Cory L. Nardin Nov 2006

Capillary-Driven Flows Along Rounded Interior Corners, Yongkang Chen, Mark M. Weislogel, Cory L. Nardin

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The problem of low-gravity isothermal capillary flow along interior corners that are rounded is revisited analytically in this work. By careful selection of geometric length scales and through the introduction of a new geometric scaling parameter Tc, the Navier–Stokes equation is reduced to a convenient∼O(1) form for both analytic and numeric solutions for all values of corner half-angle α and corner roundedness ratio λ for perfectly wetting fluids. The scaling and analysis of the problem captures much of the intricate geometric dependence of the viscous resistance and significantly reduces the reliance on numerical data compared with several previous solution methods …


Capillary Flow In Interior Corners: The Infinite Column, Mark M. Weislogel Nov 2001

Capillary Flow In Interior Corners: The Infinite Column, Mark M. Weislogel

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Capillary flow of a sinusoidally perturbed liquid column in an interior corner of infinite extent is solved using lubrication theory. Due primarily to the length scales selected to nondimensionalize the momentum equation, an analytic time scale governing the settling of the perturbation is determined. The time scale, which is shown to be independent of a steady base state flow, proves useful in rapidly predicting transients for surface settling in certain liquid-bearing tanks of spacecraft employing interior corners for fluids management purposes. The asymptotic analysis is extended to address flows along interior corners whose faces are slightly nonplanar. The generalized formulation …


Capillary Surfaces In An Exotic Container: Results From Space Experiments, Paul Concus, Robert Finn, Mark M. Weislogel Sep 1999

Capillary Surfaces In An Exotic Container: Results From Space Experiments, Paul Concus, Robert Finn, Mark M. Weislogel

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Experimental results from the Interface Configuration Experiment (ICE) performed aboard the Space Shuttle and the Mir Space Station are reported. The experiment concerns fluid interfaces in certain ‘exotic’ containers in a low-gravity environment. These containers are rotationally symmetric and have the property that for given contact angle and liquid volume, a continuum of distinct rotationally symmetric equilibrium configurations can appear, all of which have the same mechanical energy. These symmetric equilibrium configurations are unstable, in that deformations that are not rotationally symmetric can be shown mathematically to yield configurations with lower energy. It is found experimentally, in confirmation of mathematical …


Simple Model For Linear And Nonlinear Mixing At Unstable Fluid Interfaces In Spherical Geometry, John D. Ramshaw Aug 1999

Simple Model For Linear And Nonlinear Mixing At Unstable Fluid Interfaces In Spherical Geometry, John D. Ramshaw

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

A simple model was recently described for predicting linear and nonlinear mixing at an unstable planar fluid interface subjected to an arbitrary time-dependent variable acceleration history [J. D. Ramshaw, Phys. Rev. E 58, 5834 (1998)]. Here we present an analogous model for describing the mixing of two adjacent spherical fluid shells of different density resulting from an arbitrary time-dependent mean interface radius R(t). As in the planar case, the model is based on a heuristic expression for the kinetic energy of the system. This expression is based on that for the kinetic energy of a linearly perturbed interface, but with …


Simple Model For Linear And Nonlinear Mixing At Unstable Fluid Interfaces With Variable Acceleration, John D. Ramshaw Nov 1998

Simple Model For Linear And Nonlinear Mixing At Unstable Fluid Interfaces With Variable Acceleration, John D. Ramshaw

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

A simple model is described for predicting the time evolution of the half-width h of a mixing layer between two initially separated immiscible fluids of different density subjected to an arbitrary time-dependent variable acceleration history a(t). The model is based on a heuristic expression for the kinetic energy per unit area of the mixing layer. This expression is based on that for the kinetic energy of a linearly perturbed interface, but with a dynamically renormalized wavelength which becomes proportional to h in the nonlinear regime. An equation of motion for h is then derived from Lagrange's equations. This model reproduces …


Self-Consistent Effective Binary Interaction Approximation For Strongly Coupled Multifluid Dynamics, John D. Ramshaw Jan 1998

Self-Consistent Effective Binary Interaction Approximation For Strongly Coupled Multifluid Dynamics, John D. Ramshaw

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

An improved self-consistent effective binary diffusion approximation for multicomponent diffusion was recently described [1]. Here we develop an analogous self-consistent effective binary interaction (SCEBI) approximation for simplifying multifluid dynamical descriptions in which each fluid is strongly coupled to the other fluids by pairwise frictional forces. The net drag force on each fluid is the summation of the drag forces due to each of the other fluids. This summation is approximated by a single term proportional to the velocity of the fluid in question relative to an appropriately weighted average velocity. This approximation permits an explicit numerical solution for the fluid …


Existence Of The Dielectric Constant In Dipolar Fluid Mixtures, John D. Ramshaw, Norman D. Hamer Oct 1981

Existence Of The Dielectric Constant In Dipolar Fluid Mixtures, John D. Ramshaw, Norman D. Hamer

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The existence of the dielectric constant epsilon is investigated for fluid mixtures of rigid polar molecules. The investigation is performed using the functional-derivative formalism for mixtures, and is closely analogous to that previously carried out for pure dipolar fluids (J. Chem. Phys. 68, 5199 (1978)). Sufficient conditions for the existence of epsilon are obtained in terms of the direct correlation function matrix c/sub alphabeta/(12). It is found that epsilon exists if c/sub alphabeta/(12) depends only on relative positions and orientations, and becomes asymptotic to -theta/sub alphabeta/(12)/kT at long range, where theta/sub alphabeta/(12) is the dipole--dipole potential between a molecule of …


Brownian Motion In A Flowing Fluid Revisited, John D. Ramshaw Jun 1981

Brownian Motion In A Flowing Fluid Revisited, John D. Ramshaw

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

It is shown how the phenomenon of osmosis may be treated using the phenomenological theory of Brownian motion in a flowing fluid. The theory is also generalized to include viscous stresses in the particle and mixture momentum equations.


Partial Chemical Equilibrium In Fluid Dynamics, John D. Ramshaw Apr 1980

Partial Chemical Equilibrium In Fluid Dynamics, John D. Ramshaw

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

An analysis is given for the flow of a multicomponent fluid in which an arbitrary number of chemical reactions may occur, some of which are in equilibrium while the others proceed kinetically. The primitive equations describing this situation are inconvenient to use because the progress rates ω [subscript s] for the equilibrium reactions are determined implicitly by the associated equilibrium constraint conditions. Two alternative equivalent equation systems that are more pleasant to deal with are derived. In the first system, the ω [subscript s] are eliminated by replacing the transport equations for the chemical species involved in the equilibrium reactions …


Existence Of The Dielectric Constant In Rigid-Dipole Fluids: The Functional-Derivative Approach, John D. Ramshaw Jan 1977

Existence Of The Dielectric Constant In Rigid-Dipole Fluids: The Functional-Derivative Approach, John D. Ramshaw

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

In a previous article [J. Chem. Phys. 57, 2684 (1972)] sufficient conditions were established for the existence of the dielectric constant ɛ in rigid-dipole fluids. One of these conditions was an unrealistic restriction on the angular dependence of the direct correlation function c (12) at short range. Here it is shown that this restriction can be removed without altering the previous conclusions. Consequently, ɛ rigorously exists if c (12) depends only upon relative positions and orientations of molecules 1 and 2, and becomes asymptotic to -φd(12)/kT at long range, where φd(12) is the dipole-dipole potential. The development is based upon …


Existence Of The Dielectric Constant In Rigid-Dipole Fluids: The Direct Correlation Function, John D. Ramshaw Oct 1972

Existence Of The Dielectric Constant In Rigid-Dipole Fluids: The Direct Correlation Function, John D. Ramshaw

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

The question of whether the dielectric constant ε exists (is well defined) for a finite fluid system of rigid dipolar molecules is reconsidered and reformulated. It is found that this question can most simply be expressed in terms of the behavior of the position‐ and orientation‐dependent direct correlation function c(r11; r2, ω2). It is shown that ε exists if c satisfies the following two conditions: (a) c~–φ/kT for |r1–r2|>σ, where φ is the dipole‐dipole potential and σ is a length which is large microscopically but small macroscopically. …