Evaporation, wetting and multiphase flows of drops and bubbles are everyday life phenomena with potential impact in many industrial, biological, medical or engineering applications. The understanding and controlling of the physical and chemical mechanisms governing these phenomena have become of paramount importance. This thesis encompasses three topics: evaporation of sessile droplets of polymer solutions, the role of thermocapillarity on self-rewetting fluid dynamics and migration of bubbles in liquid flows. Firstly, the evaporative behaviour of sessile droplets of aqueous polymer solutions and the effect of different molecular weights on the drying process has been studied. Drop shape analysis allowed monitoring the evolution of all stages during drying and indicating the transitions between stages. The mechanisms taking place during the crucial stages of pinning and depinning were illustrated, revealing the effects of adhesion and contact line friction forces on the final morphology of the dried polymeric deposits. Additionally, the effect of varying substrates from hydrophilic to hydrophobic was examined demonstrating the importance of interfacial interaction phenomena. The initial spreading dynamics of binary alcohol mixtures (and pure liquids) deposited on different substrates in partially wetting situations, under non-isothermal conditions was systematically investigated. Moreover, the temporal and spatial thermal dynamics within pure droplets and alcohol mixtures using IR thermography revealed the existence of characteristic thermal patterns due to thermal and/or solutal instabilities. The contribution of the Marangoni effect as an important heat transport mechanism within the evaporating droplets was investigated. The motion of buoyancy-driven bubbles in a vertical microchannel and the significant role of thermocapillarity was reported in this series of experiments. The behaviour of the bubbles in self-rewetting fluid flows departed considerably from that of pure liquids flows. Furthermore, heat transfer coefficient calculations in the single and two phase flows demonstrated that the presence of Marangoni (surface tension) stresses resulted in the enhancement of the heat transfer distribution in the self-rewetting fluid flows compared with the pure ones.

This manuscript has been realized in the frame of SELENE experiment research activities. SELENE is the ac-ronym of Self-rewetting fluids for ENErgy management and consists of a space project aiming to investigate heat and mass transfer phenomena in mono-groove configuration with self-rewetting fluids (SRFs). Self-rewetting fluids are mixture showing an anomalous trend of surface tension with temperature, an inversion of the surface tension slope after certain temperature. As consequence, when the minimum in surface ten-sion is crossed, surface tension gradient at the meniscus interface pulls the liquid towards the warmest region, preventing hot spots. This mechanism is completely spontaneous and has an interesting potential when applied to heat transfer applications as heat pipes (HPs). In HPs heat is removed by the liquid at the warmest region (the evaporator) and transported at the coldest zone (the condenser) by phase change; here, heat is removed by the pipe and dissipated outside through a radiator. To operate correctly, liquid is supplied to the evaporator by capillarity and the liquid vapour is allowed to flow back to condenser from a dedicated pipe region where liquid is not allowed. Vapour condensation releases at the condenser the heat to be dissipated. When SRFs are replacing working fluid in HP applications and temperatures are higher than the characteristic minimum in surface tension, capillary force is assisted by inverse Marangoni flow at the vapour-liquid interface.Since heat pipe performances are related to liquid supplied at the evaporator, in order to compare SRFs and not SRFs working fluids, it is needed to split the contribution of Marangoni and capillary force in the liquid flow. Marangoni effect is related to surface tension gradient that, in a mixture as SRF, is dependent on temperature and local composition at the liquid interface. For all these reasons, SELENE is designed to be the link between scientific research on HPs and heat transfer applications using SRFs. SELENE consists of a mono-groove with trapezoidal section that can be considered as a “clump” of an Inner Grooved Heat Pipe (IGHP) and, in order to split capillary and Marangoni contribution, it is integrated dedicated tools providing the required data in terms of concentration and liquid meniscus shape. Experimental data are used to build a simplified thermo-soluto-fluido dynamic model describing the thermo-mechanic mechanisms between the liquid bulk and the vapour flow. In the manuscript here presented it has been carried on a technology development of the required diag-nostics for the SELENE space project. The diagnostics have been designed to work in microgravity condi-tions even if they are tested on ground. As concentration diagnostic, in the text are proposed several tech-niques and more interest is spent on the adaptation of I-VED (In vivo Embolic Detection) technology meas-uring fluid AC impedance to retrieve composition information; the technology is not yet mature to be inte-grated in SELENE but it presents interesting features to be investigated in microgravity conditions. As me-niscus reconstruction technique it is proposed a new and innovative technology developed in the frame of the presented thesis and it consists of a non-intrusive optical technique aiming to retrieve liquid meniscus shape (and so curvature) from a single visualization window mounted at the top of the SELENE breadboard.An analytical approach aiming to retrieve a simplified mathematical model of the transfer mechanisms is also provided in the text. The analytical analysis clearly shows the relations between the experimental measured data and the velocity profiles in the liquid and vapour regions. In addition, since in SELENE exper-iment the heat conduction across the groove itself is not negligible, in the text it is provided a semi-empirical thermal model based on the Multi Lumped Model (MLM) theory and able to retrieve local heat exchanged information along the pipe length. The model is used to compare experiments with different working fluids at different operational regimes. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished