Sensitivity of hydrothermal wave instability of marangoni convection to the interfacial heat transfer in long liquid bridges of high prandtl number fluids

This paper reports the sensitivity of hydrothermal wave (HTW) instability of Marangoni convection to the interfacial heat transfer in liquid bridges (LBs) of high Prandtl number fluids (Pr = 67, 112, and 207) formed under the microgravity environment on the International Space Station. The data for instability are collected for a wide range of AR and for TC = 15 and 20 °C, where AR is the aspect ratio (=height/diameter) of the LB and TC is the cooled disk temperature. A significant decrease in critical oscillation frequency as well as an appreciable decrease in the critical Marangoni number is observed for AR > 1.25. This drastic change of instability mechanisms is associated with the reversal of axial traveling direction of HTWs and roll-structures as reported previously. It is found that this reversal is closely related to the interfacial heat transfer, which is evaluated numerically through accounting for both convective and radiative components. A heat transfer ratio, QI /QH, is introduced as a dimensionless parameter for interfacial heat transfer, where QI and QH are the heat transfer rates at the LB-gas and LB-heated disk interfaces, respectively. It is found that HTWs travel in the same direction as the surface flow for QI /QH > 0 (heat-loss condition) while in the opposite direction for QI /QH < 0 (heat-gain condition) in the present microgravity experiment. It is shown that the heattransfer condition alters slightly but appreciably the basic temperature and flow field, the alteration that is not accounted for in the previous linear stability analyses for an infinite LB.