Gas Bubble Motion in Liquid Metals and Aqueous Solutions in Low GravityEnvironments

摘要

Most of the low gravity experimental research in Canada is carried out usingaicraft flying Keplarian parabolic trajectories under gravity levels on the order of 0.01 gravity. This gravity level can cause significant buoyancy effects in multi-phase or multi-component fluid flow experiments, if there are large density differences between the components. Three dimensional mathematical models were developed to simulate gas bubble formation and transport in the low gravity environments typical of T-33 or KC-135 flights. The models developed can simulate gas bubble motion due to the combined effects of liquid motion and buoyancy effects. Ground based experiments examining gas bubble generation in tin were also conducted. A vibrating gas injector was used to generate gas bubbles in molten tin. The bubbles were then quenched in the molten tin, and their sizes were determined after cutting and polishing the quenched tin samples. The experiments showed that the theory to predict the bubble diameters, developed for water in a previous investigation, is also valid for tin. Gas bubbles of diameters on the order of 0.1 mm are generated in tin by using this method.