Two-Phase Oxidizing Flow in a Volatile Removal Assembly Reactor under Microgravity Conditions

Guo, Boyun; Holder, Donald W.; Tester, John T.

doi:10.2514/1.12267

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…In particular the physics of bubbles in a liquid carrier [6,7,8] is widely recognized as crucial for a variety of space technologies. These include for instance power generation and propulsion [9], thermal management [10,11], or life support systems and environmental control for life in space [12,13,14]. Given that the presence or absence of buoyancy forces affects crucially the physics of bubbly flows, the fundamental understanding of gas dispersions in microgravity conditions becomes strategic for space technology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generation and control of monodisperse bubble suspensions in microgravity

Bitlloch

Ruíz

Ramírez‐Piscina

et al. 2018

Aerospace Science and Technology

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A new experimental setup for the generation of homogeneous, monodisperse bubble suspensions in turbulent duct flows in microgravity has been designed and tested in drop tower experiments. The setup provides independent control of bubble size, void fraction and degree of turbulence. The device combines several slug-flow injectors that produce monodisperse bubble jets, with a turbulent co-flow that ensures homogeneous spatial spreading. Bubble separation in the scale of the most energetic eddies of the flow, and bubble size sufficiently smaller, ensure that turbulence is most efficient as a mechanism for spatial spreading of bubbles while preventing coalescence, thus optimizing the homogeneous and monodisperse character of the suspension. The setup works in a regime for which bubbles are spherical, but sufficiently large compared to the turbulent dissipative scales to allow for two-way coupling between bubbles and carrying flow. The volume fraction is kept relatively small to facilitate particle tracking techniques. To illustrate the potential uses of the method we characterize the statistics of bubble velocity fluctuations in steady regimes and we characterize the transient relaxation of the buoyancy-driven pseudo-turbulence when gravity is switched-off.

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