Motived by recent ground-based and microgravity experiments investigating the interfacial dynamics of a volatile liquid (FC-72, $Pr=12.34$) contained in a heated cylindrical cell, we numerically study the thermocapillary-driven flow in such an evaporating liquid layer. Particular attention is given to the prediction of the transition of the axisymmetric flow to fully three-dimensional patterns when the applied temperature increases. The numerical simulations rely on an improved one-sided model of evaporation by including heat and mass transfer through the gas phase via the heat transfer Biot number and the evaporative Biot number. We present the axisymmetric flow characteristics, show the variation of the transition points with these Biot numbers, and more importantly elucidate the twofold role of the latent heat of evaporation in the stability; evaporation not only destabilizes the flow but also stabilizes it, depending upon the place where the evaporation-induced thermal gradients come into play. We also show that buoyancy in the liquid layer has a stabilizing effect, though its effect is insignificant. At high Marangoni numbers, the numerical simulations revealed smaller-scale thermal patterns formed on the surface of a thinner evaporating layer, in qualitative agreement with experimental observations. The present work helps to gain a better understanding of the role of a phase change in the thermocapillary instability of an evaporating liquid layer.
In this work we consider a new class of oscillatory instabilities that pertain to thermocapillary destabilization of a liquid film heated by a solid substrate. We assume the substrate thickness and substrate-film thermal conductivity ratio are large so that the effect of substrate thermal diffusion is retained at leading order in the long-wave approximation. As a result, system dynamics are described by a nonlinear partial differential equation for the film thickness that is nonlocally coupled to the full substrate heat equation. Perturbing about a steady quiescent state, we find that its stab…
The two-dimensional flow of viscous incompressible liquid in a square cavity with a free boundary and differentially heated vertical sides is considered in the present work. The influence of gravitational and thermocapillary convection on temperature and velocity fields is studied in large range of dimensionless parameters and similarity criteria using equations in a Boussinesq approximation. Limiting cases of dimensionless parameters are analyzed numerically.
When the liquid has a free interface and is heated nonuniformly then besides the gravitational convection a different motion appears. This kind of a motion is originated because of a gradient of the surface tension over the liquid interface. It is suggested to call it a thermocapillary motion in analogy with an electrocapillary motion. The present paper develops a theory of thermocapillary motion for two distinct geometries: a liquid layer and a liquid drop suspended in another viscous medium. For both geometries, assuming the non-deformable interfaces, the velocity profiles are found and feas…
We investigate the radial thermocapillary flow driven by a laser-heated microbead in partial wetting at the water-air interface. Particular attention is paid to the evolution of the convective flow patterns surrounding the hot sphere as the latter is increasingly heated. The flow morphology is nearly axisymmetric at low laser power P. Increasing P leads to symmetry breaking with the onset of counter-rotating vortex pairs. The boundary condition at the interface, close to no-slip in the low-P regime, turns about stress-free between the vortex pairs in the high-P regime. These observations stron…
Self-rewetting fluids (SRFs), such as aqueous solutions of long-chain alcohols, exhibit anomalous quadratic dependence of surface tension on temperature having a minimum and with a positive gradient. When compared to the normal fluids (NFs), the SRFs can be associated with significantly modified interfacial dynamics, which have recently been exploited to enhance flow and thermal transport in various applications (e.g., microgravity and microscale transport systems). In this work, first, we develop a new analytical solution of thermocapillary convection in superimposed two SRF layers confined w…
We investigate theoretically and experimentally the evaporation of liquid disks in the presence of natural convection due to a density difference between the vapor and the surrounding gas. From the analogy between thermal convection above a heated disk and our system, we derive scaling laws to describe the evaporation rate. The local evaporation rate depends on the presence of a boundary layer in the gas phase such that the total evaporation rate is given by a combination of different scaling contributions, which reflect the structure of the boundary layer. We compare our theoretical predictio…
We study unsteady internal flows in a sessile droplet of capillary size evaporating in constant contact line mode on a heated substrate. Three-dimensional simulations of internal flows in evaporating droplets of ethanol and silicone oil have been carried out. For describing the Marangoni flows we find it necessary to account for the diffusion of vapor in air, the thermal conduction in all three phases and thermal radiation. The equations have been solved numerically by finite element method using ANSYS Fluent. As a result of the simulations, the nonstationary behavior of Bénard-Marangoni (BM) …
This paper presents a numerical study of three-dimensional laminar mixed convection within a liquid flowing on a horizontal channel heated uniformly from below. The upper surface is free and assumed to be flat. The coupled Navier-Stokes and energy equations are solved numerically by the finite volume method taking into account the thermocapillary effects (Marangoni effect). When the strength of the buoyancy, thermocapillary effects and forced convective currents are comparable $(Ri\backsimeq O(1)$ and $Bd=Ra/Ma \backsimeq O(1))$, the results show that the development of instabilities in the fo…
We consider the evaporation of a thin liquid layer which consists of a binary mixture of volatile liquids. The mixture is on top of a heated substrate and in contact with the gas phase that consists of the same vapour as the binary mixture. The effect of thermocapillarity, solutocapillarity and the van der Waals interactions are considered. We derive the long-wave evolution equations for the free interface and the volume fraction that govern the two-dimensional stability of the layer subject to the above coupled mechanisms and perform a linear stability analysis. Our results demonstrate two mo…
A theoretical framework is established to model the evaporation from continuously fed droplets, promising tools in the thermal management of high heat flux electronics. Using the framework, a comprehensive model is developed for a hemispherical water droplet resting on a heated flat substrate incorporating all of the relevant transport mechanisms: buoyant and thermocapillary convection inside the droplet and diffusive and convective transport of vapor in the gas domain. At the interface, mass, momentum, and thermal coupling of the phases are also made accounting for all pertinent physical aspe…
The evaporation of a binary sessile ethanol-water droplet on an inclined substrate is studied experimentally just below the critical sliding angles for different substrate temperatures. A customized goniometer equipped with a CMOS camera and an infrared (IR) camera is used. The droplet is observed to remain pinned in the advancing side during the evaporation process, while the receding side contracts. The asymmetry in the advancing and receding contact angles of the droplet on inclined substrate results in complex thermo-solutal Marangoni convection that is captured through IR images. The drop…
This paper presents an experimental study on thermal transport to single water droplets evaporating on heated bi-phobic surfaces consisting of a superhydrophobic matrix with a circular hydrophobic pattern with strong contact line pinning. A single water droplet of 8 ul volume is placed on a preheated surface and allowed to evaporate in an open laboratory environment. We investigate the influence of substrate orientation (horizontal and vertical) on evaporation dynamics. Using optical and infrared imaging, we report droplet fluid dynamics and heat transfer characteristics of the evaporating dro…
Effects of substrate temperature, substrate wettability and particles concentration are experimentally investigated for evaporation of a sessile water droplet containing colloidal particles. Time-varying droplet shapes and temperature of the liquid-gas interface are measured using high-speed visualization and infrared thermography, respectively. The motion of the particles inside the evaporating droplet is qualitatively visualized by an optical microscope and profile of final particle deposit is measured by an optical profilometer. On a non-heated hydrophilic substrate, a ring-like deposit for…
We numerically and experimentally investigate evaporation of a sessile droplet on a heated substrate. We develop a finite element (FE) model in two-dimensional axisymmetric coordinates to solve coupled transport of heat in the droplet and substrate, and of the mass of liquid vapor in surrounding ambient while assuming diffusion-limited, quasi-steady evaporation of the droplet. The two-way coupling is implemented using an iterative scheme and under-relaxation is used to ensure numerical stability. The FE model is validated against the published spatial profile of the evaporation mass flux and t…
