Transients in surface tension driven flows under microgravity

Aatresh, K and Raghunandan, BN (2014) Transients in surface tension driven flows under microgravity. In: 44th AIAA Fluid Dynamics Conference 2014, 16-20 June 2014, Atlanta, United States.

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Abstract

It is well known fact that surface tension of a liquid plays a dominant role in microgravity conditions. A specific problem of interest is that of propellant acquisition in spacecraft where, in the absence of gravity the propellant mass has no preferential position unless special hardware are so devised as to keep the propellant at the tank outlet. For many such configurations, models are available to determine the equilibrium position of the liquid mass, but the transients involved in driving the liquid to this state from arbitrary initial state are rarely addressed. This becomes critical if one desires experimental verification of the models since microgravity times achievable in tests can be very limited. The present work addresses this issue by solving the flow inside the tank under the influence of surface tension. The numerical model with a generic approach is validated for a couple of known experimental configurations before making predictions for spacecraft propellant management in a specific configuration which aid propellant acquisition as well as gauging which becomes critical towards the end-of-life of the spacecraft.

Item Type:	Conference Paper
Publication:	44th AIAA Fluid Dynamics Conference
Publisher:	American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc.
Additional Information:	The copyright of this article belongs to American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc.
Keywords:	Fluid dynamics; Liquids; Microgravity; Microgravity processing; Propellants; Surface tension; Tanks (containers), Equilibrium positions; Experimental verification; Generic approach; Microgravity conditions; Propellant management; Special hardware; Specific problems; Surface-tension-driven flow, Spacecraft propulsion
Department/Centre:	Division of Mechanical Sciences > Aerospace Engineering(Formerly Aeronautical Engineering)
Date Deposited:	28 Aug 2020 09:36
Last Modified:	28 Aug 2020 09:36
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/66288

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