The “Effect of Marangoni convection on heat transfer in Phase Change Materials” experiment, from a student project to the International Space Station

Abstract

This manuscript summarizes the educational and scientific outcome of the Research-based learning activities performed in the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate programmes in aerospace engineering at the Technical University of Madrid. The activities are related to the line of research in Phase Change Materials in microgravity developed at the Spanish User Support and Operations Centre. The principal scientific results obtained during these years are outlined, drawing particular attention to those related to the “Thermocapillary Effects in Phase Change Materials in Microgravity” experiment and the “Effect of Marangoni convection on heat transfer in Phase Change Materials” project. The outcomes of this research are discussed from an educational perspective. Since 2016, we observe an increased interest from students to participate in research activities, which has had direct positive impact on the production of scientific results

Three-Dimensional Effects During Thermocapillary-Driven Melting of Pcms in Cuboidal Containers in Microgravity

“…The efficacy of thermocapillary convection and complementary strategies like nanoparticles for improving PCM performance in microgravity environments will be directly evaluated by the "Effect of Marangoni Convection on Heat Transfer in Phase Change Materials" (MarPCM) project, which is planned for implementation by the European Space Agency (ESA) on the International Space Station (ISS) [38,39]. A range of numerical investigations have recently been conducted in support of this anticipated experiment and the questions it addresses, including an analysis of dynamical modes and their effect on heat transport [18][19][20]31], melting with combined gravitational and thermocapillary convection [40,41], PCM melting in a liquid bridge configuration in microgravity [27,28,37,42,43], the influence of surface heat exchange [30,44,37], the effect of nanoparticles [45], and the coupling between thermocapillary flows and sloshing [46][47][48][49][50].…”