The molten pool shape and thermocapillary convection in melting or welding of metals or alloys having negative surface tension coefficients and Prandtl number greater than unity are determined from a scale analysis. Negative surface tension coefficient indicates that the surface flow is in outward direction, while Prandtl number greater than unity represents that boundary layer thickness of conduction is less than that of momentum. Determination of the molten pool shape is crucial due to its close relationship with the strength, microstructure and properties of the fusion zone. Since Marangoni and Reynolds number are usually greater than ten thousands, transport processes can be determined by scale analysis. In this work, the molten pool is divided into the hot, intermediate and cold corner regions on the flat free surface, boundary layers on the solid-liquid interface and ahead of the melting front for analysis. The results find that the pool shape, surface speed and temperature profiles can be self-consistently evaluated as functions of Marangoni, Prandtl, Peclet, Stefan, and beam power numbers. The predictions agree with numerical computations and experimental data in the literature.

Accurate computational representations of highly deformable surfaces are indispensable in the fields of computer animation, medical simulation, computer vision, digital modeling, and computational physics. The focus of this dissertation is on the animation of physics-based phenomena with highly detailed deformable surfaces represented by triangle meshes. We first present results from an algorithm that generates continuum mechanics animations with intricate surface features. This method combines a finite element method with a tetrahedral mesh generator and a high resolution surface mesh, and it is orders of magnitude more efficient than previous approaches. Next, we present an efficient solution for the challenging problem of computing topological changes in detailed dynamic surface meshes. We then introduce a new physics-inspired surface tracking algorithm that is capable of preserving arbitrarily thin features and reproducing realistic fine-scale topological changes like Rayleigh-Plateau instabilities. This physics-inspired surface tracking technique also opens the door for a unique coupling between surficial finite element methods and volumetric finite difference methods, in order to simulate liquid surface tension phenomena more efficiently than any previous method. Due to its dramatic increase in computational resolution and efficiency, this method yielded the first computer simulations of a fully developed crown splash with droplet pinch off.

<p>The aim of this thesis work was to investigate theadsorption of surfactants to different nonpolar interfaces.Particularly, the effects of the polar group and the nature ofthe hydrophobic interface were elucidated. The interfacialbehavior of the liquid-vapor interface was investigated bymeans of surface tension measurements. Here the effect of thepolar group and the hydrocarbon chain length was investigatedin a systematic manner. It was found that the shorter of thetwo chains examined, decyl, generated a larger surface pressurecontribution than the longer, dodecyl. Furthermore, the sugarbased surfactants behaved differently as compared to theethylene oxide based ones. The former could be modelled byassuming a hard disc behavior of the head group while thelatter displayed polymeric behavior. The influence of saltconcentration on the surface tension behavior of an ionicsurfactant, sodium dodecyl sulphate, was investigated. Theresult could be rationalized by employing the Gouy- Chapmanmodel to the polar region. Furthermore, mixtures of two sugarbased surfactants were investigated by surface tensionmeasurements and the adsorbed amount of the two components atthe interface atdifferent concentrations and fractions in thebulk were obtained by applying the Gibbs surface tensionequation. It was found that the molecule with the smaller headgroup adsorbed preferentially, and more so as the totalsurfactant concentration was increased. These findings could beexplained by considering the interactions generated by thedifferent head groups. The adsorption of sugar surfactants toan isolated hydrophobic surface was studied by means of wettingmeasurements and the behavior was similar to that at theliquid-vapor interface. Wetting isotherms were measured on twodifferent hydrophobic surfaces where the covalently attachedhydrophobic layers were in a crystalline and fluid state,respectively. The wetting results revealed that the sugarsurfactants anchored in the fluid hydrophobic layer. This had asignificant influence on the force profile. For example, at thecrystalline surface the surfactant monolayers were easilyremoved as the surface came into contact at relatively lowapplied loads. This was not the case when the hydrophobic layerwas in a fluid state. Here a significant fraction of thesurfactants remained between the surfaces. Disjoining pressureisotherms were measured using a sugar based surfactant thatwere thoroughly purified and compared to the as receivedsample. Even the purified sample showed a double-layer forcealthough lower as compared to the as received, one. Asignificant difference in foam stability was also observed.</p>

The thermoelectric effect was discovered well over a century ago, yet performance has not shown improvement until recent years. Prior work has shown that the thermoelectric effect can be enhanced by the use of microscale pieces of thermoelectric material. Conventional assembly techniques are inadequate to deal with parts of this size, making it necessary to find a suitable alternative before these devices can be made economically. Capillary self-assembly is a promising alternative to conventional techniques. This method employs the use of preparing substrates with areas of favorable surface tension to place and align parts. Still, many obstacles have to be overcome to adapt this process for use of constructing thermoelectric coolers. The goal of this work is to overcome these obstacles and assess the viability of self-assembly for fabricating these devices. In effort to make the method more effective a process for creating more uniform deposits of solder is also assessed. This work shows that microscale thermoelectric elements can be assembled into functional thermoelectric devices using self-assembly techniques through the assembly of coolers in experimental work.

The goal of the present work is to develop, and evaluate a parametric model of a basic microscale Self-Assembly (SA) interaction that provides scaling predictions of process rates as a function of key process variables. At the microscale, assembly by “grasp and release” is generally challenging. Recent research efforts have proposed adapting nanoscale self-assembly (SA) processes to the microscale. SA offers the potential for reduced equipment cost and increased throughput by harnessing attractive forces (most commonly, capillary) to spontaneously assemble components. However, there are challenges for implementing microscale SA as a commercial process. The existing lack of design tools prevents simple process optimization. Previous efforts have characterized a specific aspect of the SA process. However, the existing microscale SA models do not characterize the inter-component interactions. All existing models have simplified the outcome of SA interactions as an experimentally-derived value specific to a particular configuration, instead of evaluating it outcome as a function of component level parameters (such as speed, geometry, bonding energy and direction). The present study parameterizes the outcome of interactions, and evaluates the effect of key parameters. The present work closes the gap between existing microscale SA models to add a key piece towards a complete design tool for general microscale SA process modeling. First, this work proposes a simple model for defining the probability of assembly of basic SA interactions. A basic SA interaction is defined as the event where a single part arrives on an assembly site. The model describes the probability of assembly as a function of kinetic energy, binding energy, orientation and incidence angle for the component and the assembly site. Secondly, an experimental SA system was designed, and implemented to create individual SA interactions while controlling process parameters independently. SA experiments measured the outcome of SA interactions, while studying the independent effects of each parameter. As a first step towards a complete scaling model, experiments were performed to evaluate the effects of part geometry and part travel direction under low kinetic energy conditions. Experimental results show minimal dependence of assembly yield on the incidence angle of the parts, and significant effects induced by changes in part geometry. The results from this work indicate that SA could be modeled as an energy-based process due to the small path dependence effects. Assembly probability is linearly related to the orientation probability. The proportionality constant is based on the area fraction of the sites with an amplification factor. This amplification factor accounts for the ability of capillary forces to align parts with only very small areas of contact when they have a low kinetic energy. Results provide unprecedented insight about SA interactions. The present study is a key step towards completing a basic model of a general SA process. Moreover, the outcome from this work can complement existing SA process models, in order to create a complete design tool for microscale SA systems. In addition to SA experiments, Monte Carlo simulations of experimental part-site interactions were conducted. This study confirmed that a major contributor to experimental variation is the stochastic nature of experimental SA interactions and the limited sample size of the experiments. Furthermore, the simulations serve as a tool for defining an optimum sampling strategy to minimize the uncertainty in future SA experiments.

This dissertation involved a theoretical and experimental investigation of the adhesive forces between spherical particles of four different diameters and two selected flooring materials under different air velocities. Previous theoretical work and experiments described in the literature tended to be conducted with idealized surfaces, and therefore have limited applicability to indoor environments. Controlled experiments were designed, constructed and executed to measure the air velocity required to overcome adhesion forces. The diameters of the particles investigated were 0.5, 3.0, 5.0 and 9.9 [mu]m, and the flooring materials were linoleum and wooden flooring. The critical velocity, the flow at which 50% of the particles detached, is presented as a function of particle diameter for each surface. The measured values were then compared to empirical and theoretical models as well as to a scaling analysis that considers component forces that act on a particle-surface system. The results suggest that critical velocity decreases with increasing particle diameter and that existing models have limited applicability to resuspension from flooring materials. / text

The applicability of CFD codes for two-phase flows has always been limited to special cases due to the very complex nature of its interface. Due to its tremendous computational cost, methods based on direct resolution of the interface are not applicable to most problems of practical relevance. Instead, averaging procedures are commonly used for these applications, such as the Eulerian-Eulerian approach, which necessarily means losing detailed information on the interfacial structure. In order to allow widespread application of the two-fluid approach, closure models are required to reintroduce in the simulations the correct interfacial mass, momentum, and heat transfer. It is evident that such closure models will strongly depend on the specific flow pattern. When considering vertical pipe flow with low gas volume flow rates, bubbly flow occurs. With increasing gas volume flow rates larger bubbles are generated by bubble coalescence, which further leads to transition to slug, churn-turbulent, and annular flow. Considering, as an example, a heated tube producing steam by evaporation, as in the case of a vertical steam generator, all these flow patterns including transitions are expected to occur in the system. Despite extensive attempts, robust and accurate simulations approaches for such conditions are still lacking. The purpose of this dissertation is the development, testing, and validation of a multifield model for adiabatic gas-liquid flows at high gas volume fractions, for which a multiple-size bubble approach has been implemented by separating the gas structures into a specified number of groups, each of which represents a prescribed range of sizes. A fully-resolved continuous gas phase is also computed, and represents all the gas structures which are large enough to be resolved within the computational mesh. The concept, known as GENeralized TwO Phase flow or GENTOP, is formulated as an extension to the bubble population balance approach known as the inhomogeneous MUltiple SIze Group (iMUSIG). Within the polydispersed gas, bubble coalescence and breakup allow the transfer between different size structures, while the modeling of mass transfer between the polydispersed and continuous gas allows including transitions between different gas morphologies depending on the flow situations. The calculations were performed using the computational fluid dynamic code from ANSYS, CFX 14.5, with the support of STAR-CCM+ v8.06 and v9.02. A complete three-field and four-field model, including a continuous liquid field and two to three gas fields representing bubbles of different sizes, were first tested for numerical convergence and then validated against experimental data from the TOPFLOW and MT-Loop facilities.

No description available.

Diese Doktorarbeit untersucht die verschiedenen dynamischen Prozesse, welche sich an der Tropfenoberfläche abspielen, und der Methoden, die für deren Untersuchung verwendet wurden. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, die entscheidenden Eigenschaften, die einen Einfluss auf das mechanische Verhalten der Grenzfläche haben, zu identifizieren. Wir verwenden die hydrodynamisch erzwungene Deformation eines Tropfens in einem Mikrokanal, um die mechanischen Eigenschaften der Oberfläche zu untersuchen. Diese Methode wird auf drei verschiedene Fälle angewendet. Als erstes verfolgen wir die zeitliche Entwicklung einer Grenzflächenverformung, um die Dynamik der Tensidadsorption an einer Oberfläche zu untersuchen. Dabei kalibrieren wir die Tropfenverformung als Funktion von Tropfengröße und Oberflächenspannung. Diese Technik wird auf den Fall eines perfluorierten Tensids, welches von industriellem und wissenschaftlichem Interesse ist, angewendet. Wir zeigen die Möglichkeit von Messungen der dynamischen Oberflächenspannung auf Zeitskalen von zehn Millisekunden und gewinnen daraus kinetische Eigenschaften der Moleküle. Wir vergleichen die Dynamik, welche mit der klassischen Pendant-Drop-Methode gemessen werden kann mit denen der Mikrofluidik. Es zeigt sich, dass die Adsorption für den Pendant Drop von der Di usion begrenzt wird, während in der Mikrofluidik die Anbindung an die Oberfläche der langsamere Prozess ist. Der Unterschied entsteht durch das Flussprofil in der Mikrofluidik, welches konvektiven Transport induziert. Danach untersuchen wir die Verformung unter verschiedenen räumlichen Beschränkungen im mikrofluidischen Kanal. Die Tropfenverformung wird mit einer zweidimensionalen numerischen Simulationen und mit einem dreidimensionalen Modell eines Rotationsellipsoids verglichen. In beiden Fällen wird eine qualitative Übereinstimmung festgestellt, jedoch existieren auch spürbare Abweichungen vom Experiment. Die Abweichungen vom zweidimensionalen Modell ist erklärbar mit dem sinkenden Einfluss der viskosen Spannungen mit der Kanalhöhe, hervorgerufen durch Beiträge von Deformationen außerhalb der Beobachtungsebene, welche von dem Modell nicht wiedergegeben werden. Die Abweichungen vom dreidimensionalen Modell kommen von den räumlichen Beschränkungen, welche die Tropfenform von einem Rotationsellipsoid abweichend verformt. Die Untersuchung zeigt die Schwierigkeiten bei der Beschreibung von viskosen Kräfte für Abmessungen, die zu groß sind um als zweidimensional betrachtet zu werden, aber wo die Wechselwirkungen mit den Kanalwänden nicht vernachlässigbar sind. Wir diskutieren ebenfalls den Fall der trägen Relaxation des Tropfens bei Reynoldszahlen von Re 10, für welchen Oszillationen der Tropfenoberfläche beobachtet werden. Wir zeigen, dass die Oszillationen als hydrodynamische Analogie zu einer hookeschen Feder beschrieben werden können, wobei die Oberflächenspannung als Federkonstante fungiert und die Dämpfung durch die Viskosität der Flüssigkeit bestimmt wird. Die Methode liefert korrekte Ergebnisse sowohl für reine Grenzflächen als auch für Grenzflächen mit Tensiden, was zu einer zusätzliche Möglichkeit führt, die Oberflächenspannung aus der Frequenz der Verformungen zu bestimmen. Die viskose Relaxation wurde auch hierbei von den Kanalwänden beeinflusst. Als letztes wenden wir die Methode der mikrofluidischen Tensiometrie auf die Kinetik einer Polymerisationsreaktion auf der Tropfenoberfläche an. Der Einfluss der Reagenzkonzentration auf die Reaktionszeit wird untersucht, ebenso wie der E ekt der Gegenwart von Tensidmolekülen. Erste Ergebnisse dieser Untersuchung zeigen, dass die Deformation einer komplexen Grenzfläche nicht mehr allein durch die Oberflächenspannung beschrieben werden kann. Vielmehr muss die Beschreibung der mechanischen Eigenschaften der Grenzfläche notwendigerweise die Entstehung der Viskoelastizität an der Oberfläche mit in Betracht ziehen. Diese Erkenntnis erö net neue Möglichkeiten, mit Hilfe von Mikrofluidik die mechanischen Eigenschaften von komplexen Grenzflächen, wie zum Beispiel kolloidbesetzte Grenzflächen oder Membranen, zu charakterisieren.

The main purpose of this thesis is the development of a new methodology of contact angle measurement called ADSA-NA (Axisymmetric Drop Shape Analysis - No Apex) that analyzes drop shape configurations with no apex. Thus ADSA-NA facilitates contact angle measurements on drops with a capillary protruding into the drop. This development is desirable because the original ADSA has some limitations for contact angle measurement, and there is a need for the improvement of the accuracy of contact angle measurement. To develop ADSA-NA, a new reference point other than the apex and a new set of optimization parameters different from those of ADSA had to be defined. The three main modules of ADSA had also to be modified; the image analysis, the numerical integration of the Laplace equation for generating theoretical curves, and the optimization procedure. It was shown that ADSA-NA significantly enhances the precision of contact angle and surface tension measurements (by at least a factor of 5) compared to those obtained from sessile drops using ADSA. Computational as well as design aspects of ADSA-NA were scrutinized in depth, well beyond the level of scrutiny in the original ADSA. On the computational side, the results obtained from one and the same drop image were compared using different gradient and non-gradient edge detection strategies and different gradient and non-gradient optimization methods. It was found that the difference between the results of different edge detection strategies is minimal. It was also found that all the optimization methods yield the same answer with eight significant figures for one and the same image. The determination of the location of the solid surface in the drop image was also further refined. On the design side, the effect of controllable experimental factors such as drop height and drop volume on the accuracy of surface tension measurement was studied. It was shown that drop height is the dominant experimental factor, and larger drop heights yield lower surface tension errors.