Density relaxation of a near-critical fluid in response to local heating and low frequency vibration in microgravity.

The response of a confined near-critical fluid to local heating in the presence of vibration is studied by means of two-dimensional numerical simulations of the compressible and unsteady Navier-Stokes equations written for a van der Waals fluid. As in the experiments performed two years ago onboard the Mir orbital station, two different regimes of density distribution are observed. For sufficiently low frequency and high amplitude vibration, two thermal plumes develop from the heat source along the vibration axis. Otherwise (higher frequency and/or lower amplitude), density inhomogeneities caused by heating stay around the heat source. For this regime, the pair of vortices created in each half period absorbs the preceding one, while it is convected away for the double-plume regime. As time goes on, this process repeats, with a lateral extension of the low density region. At lower frequencies, instabilities appear in the flow, thus corroborating again microgravity experiments.