Lj. Peltier et al., NUMERICAL-SIMULATION OF TIME-DEPENDENT THERMOCAPILLARY CONVECTION IN LAYERED FLUID SYSTEMS, Journal of thermophysics and heat transfer, 9(4), 1995, pp. 702-707
We consider steady and time-dependent thermocapillary convection in en
capsulated layers of moderate Prandtl number fluids. Assuming flat fre
e surfaces and fluid/fluid interfaces, the two-dimensional, time-depen
dent Navier-Stokes equations and the energy equation are integrated by
a time-accurate method on a stretched, staggered mesh, particular att
ention is focused on the nature of time dependence in water encapsulat
ion of Fluorinert FC-75 and in ethylene glycol encapsulated by FC-75 a
nd hexadecane, We show that similar mechanisms for time-dependent ther
mocapillary convection exist for single-layer and multiple-layer fluid
systems, and that shear effects at a thermocapillary interface can re
duce convection in an encapsulated fluid layer. Based on our estimates
for the thermal coefficients of interface tension, an apparent benefi
t of fluid encapsulation is to lessen the tendency toward time depende
nce.