McCraney Joshua, Weislogel Mark, Steen Paul
Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14850, United States.
Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Portland State University, Portland, OR, 97201, United States.
NPJ Microgravity. 2021 Nov 11;7(1):45. doi: 10.1038/s41526-021-00173-5.
In this work, we analyze liquid drains from containers in effective zero-g conditions aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The efficient draining of capillary fluids from conduits, containers, and media is critical in particular to high-value liquid samples such as minuscule biofluidics processing on earth and enormous cryogenic fuels management aboard spacecraft. The amount and rate of liquid drained can be of key concern. In the absence of strong gravitational effects, system geometry, and liquid wetting dominate capillary fluidic behavior. During the years 2010-2015, NASA conducted a series of handheld experiments aboard the ISS to observe "large" length scale capillary fluidic phenomena in a variety of irregular containers with interior corners. In this work, we focus on particular single exit port draining flows from such containers and digitize hours of archived NASA video records to quantify transient interface profiles and volumetric flow rates. These data are immediately useful for theoretical and numerical model benchmarks. We demonstrate this by making comparisons to lubrication models for slender flows in simplified geometries which show variable agreement with the data, in part validating certain geometry-dependent dynamical interface curvature boundary conditions while invalidating others. We further compare the data for the draining of complex vane networks and identify the limits of the current theory. All analyzed data is made available to the public as MATLAB files, as detailed within.
在这项工作中，我们分析了国际空间站（ISS）上有效零重力条件下容器中的液体排放情况。从管道、容器和介质中高效排出毛细管流体，对于诸如地球上微小生物流体处理以及航天器上大量低温燃料管理等高价值液体样本而言至关重要。液体排出的量和速率可能是关键关注点。在没有强大重力影响的情况下，系统几何形状和液体润湿性主导着毛细管流体行为。在2010年至2015年期间，美国国家航空航天局（NASA）在国际空间站上进行了一系列手持实验，以观察各种带有内角的不规则容器中“大”长度尺度的毛细管流体现象。在这项工作中，我们专注于此类容器特定的单出口端口排水流动，并将美国国家航空航天局存档的数小时视频记录数字化，以量化瞬态界面轮廓和体积流率。这些数据对于理论和数值模型基准测试立即可用。我们通过与简化几何形状中细长流动的润滑模型进行比较来证明这一点，该模型与数据显示出不同程度的一致性，部分验证了某些与几何形状相关的动态界面曲率边界条件，同时否定了其他条件。我们进一步比较了复杂叶片网络排水的数据，并确定了当前理论的局限性。所有分析数据都作为MATLAB文件向公众提供，详情如下。
