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At least 19 records

Convolutional Neural Networks for Problems in Transport Phenomena: A Theoretical Minimum

Convolutional neural network (CNN), a deep learning algorithm, has gained popularity in technological applications that rely on interpreting images (typically, an image is a 2D field of pixels). Transport phenomena is the science of studying different fields representing mass, momentum, or heat transfer. Some of the common fields are species concentration, fluid velocity, pressure, and temperature. Each of these fields can be expressed as an image(s). Consequently, CNNs can be leveraged to solve specific scientific problems in transport phenomena. Herein, we show that such problems can be grouped into three basic categories: (a) mapping a field to a descriptor (b) mapping a field to another field, and (c) mapping a descriptor to a field. After reviewing the representative transport phenomena literature for each of these categories, we illustrate the necessary steps for constructing appropriate CNN solutions using sessile liquid drops as an exemplar problem. If sufficient training data is available, CNNs can considerably speed up the solution of the corresponding problems. Finally, the present discussion is meant to be minimalistic such that readers can easily identify the transport phenomena problems where CNNs can be useful as well as construct and/or assess such solutions.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Caustics and Caustic-Diffraction in Laser Shadowgraphy of a Sessile Drop and Identification of Profile Near Contact Line

This paper presents an optical method based on the caustics and caustic-difraction in laser shadowgaphy of a sessile drop to identify and estimate the drop profile near the contact line. A parallel laser beam passes through a liquid sessile drop placed on a transparent substrate to produce a shadowgraphic image of the drop on the screen far from the substrate. Along the inflection line of the drop the Gaussian curvature of the wavefront deformed by the drop vanishes, and therefore the inflection line gives caustics in the far field of the wave, which can be seen on the screen. The neighboring light rays at both sides of the inflection line interfere with each other to form interference fringes at the inner side of the caustics. According to the pattern of the caustics, the drop-profile shape can be identified and estimated.

Zhang, Neng-Li↗

New Method Developed to Measure Contact Angles of a Sessile Drop

The spreading of an evaporating liquid on a solid surface occurs in many practical processes and is of importance in a number of practical situations such as painting, textile dyeing, coating, gluing, and thermal engineering. Typical processes involving heat transfer where the contact angle plays an important role are film cooling, boiling, and the heat transfer through heat pipes. The biological phenomenon of cell spreading also is analogous to a drop spreading (ref. 1). In the study of spreading, the dynamic contact angle describes the interfacial properties on solid substrates and, therefore, has been studied by physicists and fluid mechanics investigators. The dynamic contact angle of a spreading nonvolatile liquid drop provides a simple tool in the study of the free-boundary problem, but the study of the spreading of a volatile liquid drop is of more practical interest because the evaporation of common liquids is inevitable in practical processes. The most common method to measure the contact angle, the contact radius, and the height of a sessile drop on a solid surface is to view the drop from its edge through an optical microscope. However, this method gives only local information in the view direction. Zhang and Yang (ref. 2) developed a laser shadowgraphy method to investigate the evaporation of sessile drop on a glass plate. As described here, Zhang and Chao (refs. 3 and 4) improved the method and suggested a new optical arrangement to measure the dynamic contact angle and the instant evaporation rate of a sessile drop with much higher accuracy (less than 1 percent). With this method, any fluid motion in the evaporating drop can be visualized through shadowgraphy without using a tracer, which often affects the field under investigation.

Chao, David F.↗

The surface tension of liquid gallium

The surface tension of liquid gallium has been measured using the sessile drop technique in an Auger spectrometer. The experimental method is described. The surface tension in mJ/sq m is found to decrease linearly with increasing temperature and may be represented as 708-0.66(T-29.8), where T is the temperature in centigrade. This result is of interest because gallium has been suggested as a model fluid for Marangoni flow experiments. In addition, the surface tension is of technological significance in the processing of compound semiconductors involving gallium.

Hardy, S. C.↗

Studies of liquid metal surfaces using Auger spectroscopy

The surface composition of liquid gallium-tin alloys is studied in an Auger electron spectrometer as a function of bulk composition and temperature. The sessile drop samples are cleaned by argon ion bombardment sputtering of the liquid. This technique produces surfaces that are entirely free of impurities within the sensitivity of the spectrometer and remain so for many days. Tin is found to be strongly adsorbed at the liquid-vacuum interface. Surface concentrations based on Auger measurements are found to be in reasonably good agreement with values calculated from surface tension measurements interpreted in terms of a monolayer depth distribution model for the adsorbed tin.

Hardy, S.↗

Drop Ejection From an Oscillating Rod

The dynamics of a drop of a Newtonian liquid that is pendant from or sessile on a solid rod that is forced to undergo time-periodic oscillations along its axis is studied theoretically. The free boundary problem governing the time evolution of the shape of the drop and the flow field inside it is solved by a method of lines using a finite element algorithm incorporating an adaptive mesh. When the forcing amplitude is small, the drop approaches a limit cycle at large times and undergoes steady oscillations thereafter. However, drop breakup is the consequence if the forcing amplitude exceeds a critical value. Over a wide range of amplitudes above this critical value, drop ejection from the rod occurs during the second oscillation period from the commencement of rod motion. Remarkably, the shape of the interface at breakup and the volume of the primary drop formed are insensitive to changes in forcing amplitude. The interface shape at times close to and at breakup is a multi-valued function of distance measured along the rod axis and hence cannot be described by recently popularized one-dimensional approximations. The computations show that drop ejection occurs without the formation of a long neck. Therefore, this method of drop formation holds promise of preventing formation of undesirable satellite droplets.

Wilkes, E. D.↗

Effects of Evaporation/Condensation on Spreading and Contact Angle of a Volatile Liquid Drop

Effects of evaporation/condensation on spreading and contact angle were experimentally studied. A sessile drop of R-113 was tested at different vapor environments to determine the effects of evaporation/condensation on the evolution of contact diameter and contact angle of the drop. Condensation on the drop surface occurs at both the saturated and a nonsaturated vapor environments and promotes the spreading. When the drop is placed in the saturated vapor environment it tends to completely wetting and spreads rapidly. In a nonsaturated vapor environment, the evolution of the sessile drop is divided three stages: condensation-spreading stage, evaporation-retracting stage and rapid contracting stage. In the first stage the drop behaves as in the saturated environment. In the evaporation -retracting stage, the competition between spreading and evaporation of the drop determines the evolution characteristics of the contact diameter and the contact angle. A lower evaporation rate struggles against the spreading power to turn the drop from spreading to retracting with a continuous increase of the contact angle. The drop placed in open air has a much higher evaporation rate. The strong evaporation suppresses the spreading and accelerates the retraction of the drop with a linear decrease of the contact diameter. The contraction of the evaporating drops is gradually accelerated when the contact diameter decreases to 3 min and less till drying up, though the evaporation rate is gradually slowing down.

Zhang, Nengli↗

Forced Oscillations of Supported Drops

Oscillations of supported liquid drops are the subject of wide scientific interest, with applications in areas as diverse as liquid-liquid extraction, synthesis of ceramic powders, growing of pure crystals in low gravity, and measurement of dynamic surface tension. In this research, axisymmetric forced oscillations of arbitrary amplitude of viscous liquid drops of fixed volume which are pendant from or sessile on a rod with a fixed or moving contact line and surrounded by an inviscid ambient gas are induced by moving the rod in the vertical direction sinusiodally in time. In this paper, a preliminary report is made on the computational analysis of the oscillations of supported drops that have 'clean' interfaces and whose contact lines remain fixed throughout their motions. The relative importance of forcing to damping can be increased by either increasing the amplitude of rod motion A or Reynolds number Re. It is shown that as the ratio of forcing to damping rises, for drops starting from an initial rest state a sharp increase in deformation can occur when they are forced to oscillate in the vicinity of their resonance frequencies, indicating the incipience of hysteresis. However, it is also shown that the existence of a second stable limit cycle and the occurrence of hysteresis can be observed if the drop is subjected to a so-called frequency sweep, where the forcing frequency is first increased and then decreased over a suitable range. Because the change in drop deformation response is abrupt in the vicinity of the forcing frequencies where hysteresis occurs, it should be possible to exploit the phenomenon to accurately measure the viscosity and surface tension of the drop liquid.

Wilkes, Edward D.↗

Transport phenomena in the crystallization of lysozyme by osmotic dewatering and liquid-liquid diffusion in low gravity

Two methods of protein crystallization, osmotic dewatering and liquid-liquid diffusion, like the vapor diffusion (hanging-drop and sessile-drop) methods allow a gradual approach to supersaturation conditions. The crystallization of hen egg-white lysozyme, an extensively characterized protein crystal, in the presence of sodium chloride was used as an experimental model with which to compare these two methods in low gravity and in the laboratory. Comparisons of crystal growth rates by the two methods under the two conditions have, to date, indicated that the rate of crystal growth by osmotic dewatering is nearly the same in low gravity and on the ground, while much faster crystal growth rates can be achieved by the liquid-liquid diffusion method in low gravity.

Todd, Paul↗

Behavior of liquid hydrogen inside an ICF target

The configuration of liquid hydrogen inside spherical glass shell ICF target was studied both theoretically and experimentally. Because of the zero contact angle between the .D2 liquid and glass substrate and the limited wetting surface that is continuous, the liquid hydrogen completely covers the interior of the glass shell, resulting in the formation of a void at the center. For this reason, the present problem distinguishes itself from that for a sessile drop sitting on a flat surface. A theory was formulated to calculate the liquid hydrogen configuration by including the London-dispersion force between the liquid and the substrate molecules. The net result is an augmented Bashforth-Adams equation appropriate to a spherical substrate, which is considered to be the major contribution of the present work. Preliminary calculations indicate that this equation accurately models the liquid hydrogen behavior inside a spherical microshell.

Kim, K.↗

Effects of varying oxygen partial pressure on molten silicon-ceramic substrate interactions

The silicon sessile drop contact angle was measured on hot pressed silicon nitride, silicon nitride coated on hot pressed silicon nitride, silicon carbon coated on graphite, and on Sialon to determine the degree to which silicon wets these substances. The post-sessile drop experiment samples were sectioned and photomicrographs were taken of the silicon-substrate interface to observe the degree of surface dissolution and degradation. Of these materials, silicon did not form a true sessile drop on the SiC on graphite due to infiltration of the silicon through the SiC coating, nor on the Sialon due to the formation of a more-or-less rigid coating on the liquid silicon. The most wetting was obtained on the coated Si3N4 with a value of 42 deg. The oxygen concentrations in a silicon ribbon furnace and in a sessile drop furnace were measured using the protable thoria-yttria solid solution electrolyte oxygen sensor. Oxygen partial pressures of 10 to the minus 7 power atm and 10 to the minus 8 power atm were obtained at the two facilities. These measurements are believed to represent nonequilibrium conditions.

Ownby, D. P.↗

Surface Tensions and Their Variations with Temperature and Impurities

The surface tensions in this work were determined using the sessile drop technique. This method is based on a comparison of the profile of a liquid drop with the profile calculated by solving the Young-Laplace equation. The comparison can be made in several ways; the traditional Bashforth-Adams procedure was used in conjunction with recently calculated drop shape tables which virtually eliminate interpolation errors. Although previous study has found little difference in measurements with pure and oxygen doped silicon, there is other evidence suggesting that oxygen in dilute concentrations severely depresses the surface tension of silicon. The surface tension of liquid silicon in purified argon atmospheres was measured. A temperature coefficient near -0.28 mJ/square meters K was found. The experiments show a high sensitivity of the surface tension to what is believed are low concentrations of oxygen. Thus one cannot rule out some effect of low levels of oxygen in the results. However, the highest surface tension values obtained in conditions which minimized the residual oxygen pressure are in good agreement with a previous measurement in pure hydrogen. Therefore, depression of the surface tension by oxygen is insignificant in these measurements.

Hardy, S. C.↗

A New Approach to Measure Contact Angle and Evaporation Rate with Flow Visualization in a Sessile Drop

The contact angle and the spreading process of sessile droplet are very crucial in many technological processes, such as painting and coating, material processing, film-cooling applications, lubrication, and boiling. Additionally, as it is well known that the surface free energy of polymers cannot be directly, measured for their elastic and viscous restraints. The measurements of liquid contact angle on the polymer surfaces become extremely important to evaluate the surface free energy of polymers through indirect methods linked with the contact angle data. Due to the occurrence of liquid evaporation is inevitable, the effects of evaporation on the contact angle and the spreading become very important for more complete understanding of these processes. It is of interest to note that evaporation can induce Marangoni-Benard convection in sessile drops. However, the impacts of the inside convection on the wetting and spreading processes are not clear. The experimental methods used by previous investigators cannot simultaneously measure the spreading process and visualize the convection inside. Based on the laser shadowgraphic system used by the present author, a very simple optical procedure has been developed to measure the contact angle, the spreading speed, the evaporation rate, and to visualize inside convection of a sessile drop simultaneously. Two CCD cameras were used to synchronously record the real-time diameter of the sessile drop, which is essential for determination of both spreading speed and evaporation rate, and the shadowgraphic image magnified by the sessile drop acting as a thin plano-convex lens. From the shadowgraph, the inside convection of the drop can be observed if any and the image outer diameter, which linked to the drop profile, can be measured. Simple equations have been derived to calculate the drop profile, including the instantaneous contact angle, height, and volume of the sessile drop, as well as the evaporation rate. The influence of the inside convection on the wetting and spreading processes can be figured out through comparison of the drop profiles with and without inside convection when the sessile drop is placed at different evaporation conditions.

Zhang, Nengli↗

Surface Wettability Analysis from Adsorption Energy and Surface Electrical Charge

Surface wettability is determined by the attraction of a liquid phase to a solid surface. It is typically quantified by using contact angle measurements at mineral surfaces in the case of the flotation of mineral particles. Contact angle research to describe wettability has been investigated at different scales by sessile drop measurements, molecular dynamic simulation, and atomic force microscopy. In this study, the density functional theory (DFT) was employed for predicting the surface free energy and contact angles of a well-known hydrophobic phyllosilicate mineral talc and a well-known hydrophilic phyllosilicate mineral muscovite based on the calculated interfacial energy and surface charge. The results revealed that the predicted contact angle at the atomic scale was larger than the experimental value, and identified two interactions: electrostatic interaction and hydrogen bonding, between the hydrophilic muscovite surface and the water layer, while a water-exclusion zone of 3.346 Å was found between the hydrophobic talc surface and the first water layer. This investigation gives a new perspective for wettability determination at the atomic scale.

Geochemistry & Geophysics↗

Experimental Measurements of Spreading of Volatile Liquid Droplets

Based on the laser shadowgraphic system used by the first author of the present paper, a simple optical system, which combined the laser shadowgraphy and the direct magnified-photography, has been developed to measure the contact angle, the spreading speed, and the evaporation rate. Additionally, the system can also visualize thermocapillary convection inside of a sessile drop simultaneously. The experimental results show that evaporation/condensation and thermocapillary convection in the sessile drop induced by the evaporation strongly affects the wetting and spreading of the drop. Condensation always promotes the wetting and spreading of the drop. Evaporation may increase or decrease the contact angle of the evaporating sessile drops, depending on the evaporation rate. The thermocapillary convection in the drop induced by the evaporation enhances the effects of evaporation to suppress the spreading.

Zhang, Neng-Li↗

Flow Visualization in Evaporating Liquid Drops and Measurement of Dynamic Contact Angles and Spreading Rate

A new hybrid optical system, consisting of reflection-refracted shadowgraphy and top-view photography, is used to visualize flow phenomena and simultaneously measure the spreading and instant dynamic contact angle in a volatile-liquid drop on a nontransparent substrate. Thermocapillary convection in the drop, induced by evaporation, and the drop real-time profile data are synchronously recorded by video recording systems. Experimental results obtained from this unique technique clearly reveal that thermocapillary convection strongly affects the spreading process and the characteristics of dynamic contact angle of the drop. Comprehensive information of a sessile drop, including the local contact angle along the periphery, the instability of the three-phase contact line, and the deformation of the drop shape is obtained and analyzed.

Zhang, Neng-Li↗

Enhanced Boiling on Micro-Configured Composite Surfaces Under Microgravity Conditions

Two experimental setups: High Heat Flux Pool Boiling Setup and Optical system of Measuring Contact Angle and Spreading Parameters were established and a series of experiments was conducted. The experimental work on the nucleate boiling performance of both Freon-113 and water on the composite surfaces has been finished and the results show that the composite surface with 25% volume fraction of graphite fibers in the copper matrix has the best enhancing performance. Stronger enhancement was obtained for water compared to Freon-113. The wall superheat initiating boiling was reduced 40% and 35% and the heat flux of the nucleate boiling was augmented up to ten times and 6.7 times, respectively. A bubble departure model has been presented to explain the enhancement mechanism of the boiling heat transfer on the composite surfaces. A powerful optical method to measure contact angle and spreading parameters of liquids on solid surfaces, including both transparent and non-transparent substrates, has been developed and successfully used in the measurements for various liquid-solid systems. The experimental work on identification of profiles near three-phase line by laser shadowgraphy method has been finished and the characteristics of the three-phase line for different liquid-solid systems were unveiled, which is very important to understand the mechanism of boiling under microgravity conditions. The four basic patterns of sessile profile were discovered through caustics and caustic-diffraction analysis by applying wave theory in shadowgraphy technology, which contributes to clearly explain the different characteristics of wetting and spreading of various liquids on a solid surface, and therefore to further understand the bubble departure mechanisms. A new working pattern of heat pipes using working fluids with positive surface-tension gradient against temperature was discovered and analyzed, and then the new heat pipe systems using this kind of working fluids have been presented. Two patent devices, i.e. Shadowgraphic Method to Measure Properties of Sessile Drops and Heat Pipe Systems Using New Working Fluids, have been developed; the former has been approved by The United States Patent & Trademark Office and the latter is being examined.

Source record↗