Lubricated Soft Normal Elastic Contact of a Sphere: A New Numerical Method and Experiment

An important problem in lubrication is the squeezing of a thin liquid film between a rigid sphere and an elastic substrate under normal contact. Numerical solution of this problem typically...

Synthesis of Thin Titania Coatings onto the Inner Surface of Quartz Tubes and Their Photoactivity in Decomposition of Methylene Blue and Rhodamine B

An evaporation-deposition coating method for coating the inner surface of long (>1 m) quartz tubes of small diameter has been studied by the introduction of two-phase (gas-liquid) flow with the gas core flowing in the middle and a thin liquid film of synthesis sol flowing near the hot tube wall. The operational window for the deposition of continuous titania coatings has been obtained. The temperature range for the deposition of continuous titania coatings is limited to 105–120 °C and the gas flow rate is limited to the range of 0.4‒1.0 L min−1. The liquid flow rate in the annular flow regime allows to control the coating thickness between 3 and 10 mm and the coating porosity between 10% and 20%. By increasing the liquid flow rate, the coating porosity can be substantially reduced. The coatings were characterized by X-ray diffraction, N2 chemisorption, thermogravimetric analysis, and scanning electron microscopy. The coatings were tested in the photocatalytic decomposition of methylene blue and rhodamine B under UV-light and their activity was similar to that of a commercial P25 titania catalyst.

Effect of pH-Regulation on the Capture of Lipopolysaccharides from E. coli EH100 by Four-Antennary Oligoglycines in Aqueous Medium

Bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS) are designated as endotoxins, because they cause fever and a wide range of pathologies in humans. It is important to develop effective methodologies to detect trace quantities of LPS in aqueous systems. The present study develops a fine-tuning procedure for the entrapment of trace quantities of LPS from E. coli EH100. The capture agents are self-assemblies (tectomers) formed by synthetic four-antennary oligoglycine (C-(CH2-NH-Gly7)4, T4). Based on previously performed investigations of bulk and adsorption-layer properties of aqueous solutions containing T4 and LPS, the optimal conditions for the entrapment interactions are further fine-tuned by the pH regulation of aqueous systems. A combined investigation protocol is developed, including dynamic light scattering, profile analysis tensiometry, microscopic thin-liquid-film techniques, and transmission electron microscopy. The key results are: (1) two types of complexes between T4 and LPS are generated—amphiphilic species and “sandwich-like” hydrophilic entities; the complexes are smaller at lower pH, and larger at higher pH; (2) an optimum range of pH values is established within which the whole quantity of the LPS is entrapped by the tectomers, namely pH = 5.04–6.30. The obtained data substantiate the notion that T4 may be used for an effective capture and the removal of traces of endotoxins in aqueous systems.

Thin-film Rayleigh–Taylor instability in the presence of a deep periodic corrugated wall

Rayleigh–Taylor instability of a thin liquid film overlying a passive fluid is examined when the film is attached to a periodic wavy deep corrugated wall. A reduced-order long-wave model shows that the wavy wall enhances the instability toward rupture when the interface pattern is sub-harmonic to the wall pattern. An expression that approximates the growth constant of instability is obtained for any value of wall amplitude for the special case when the wall consists of two full waves and the interface consists of a full wave. Nonlinear computations of the interface evolution show that sliding is arrested by the wavy wall if a single liquid film residing over a passive fluid is considered but not necessarily when a bilayer sandwiched by a top wavy wall and bottom flat wall is considered. In the latter case interface tracking shows that primary and secondary troughs will evolve and subsequently slide along the flat wall due to symmetry-breaking. It is further shown that this sliding motion of the interface can ultimately be arrested by the top wavy wall, depending on the holdup of the fluids. In other words, there exists a critical value of the interface position beyond which the onset of the sliding motion is observed and below which the sliding is always arrested.

Experimental analysis of the evaporation of a thin liquid film deposited on a capillary heated tube: estimation of the local heat transfer coefficient

The aim of this work is to estimate the local heat flux and heat transfer coefficient for the case of evaporation of thin liquid film deposited on capillary heated channel: it plays a fundamental role in the two-phase heat transfer processes inside mini-channels. In the present analysis it is investigated a semi-infinite slug flow (one liquid slug followed by one single vapour bubble) in a heated capillary copper tube. The estimation procedure here adopted is based on the solution of the inverse heat conduction problem within the wall domain adopting, as input data, the temperature field on the external tube wall acquired by means of infrared thermography.

Longitudinal Modulation of Marangoni Wave Patterns in Thin Film Heated From Below: Instabilities and Control

Non-linear Marangoni waves, which are generated by the long-wave oscillatory instability of the conductive state in a thin liquid film heated from below in the case of a deformable free surface and a substrate of very low conductivity, are considered. Previously, the investigation of traveling Marangoni waves was restricted to the analysis of the bifurcation and stability with respect to disturbances with strongly different wave vectors. In the present article, for the first time, the modulational instability of traveling waves is investigated. We derive the amplitude equation for the modulated traveling wave, which describes non-linear interaction of the main convective pattern with the perturbations with slightly different wavenumbers. The amplitude equation differs from the conventional complex Ginzburg–Landau equation as it contains an additional term of the local liquid level rise. Linear stability analysis reveals two modulational instability modes: the amplitude modulational and the phase modulational (Benjamin–Feir) ones. It is shown that traveling rolls are stable against the longitudinal modulation for the uncontrolled convection. We also investigate the influence of the non-linear feedback control, which was applied previously to eliminate subcritical excitation of traveling rolls. Computations reveal both the modulational modes under the non-linear feedback control. The obtained results show that the modulational instabilities significantly influence the region of parameters where the non-linear feedback control is efficient for stabilization of waves.

Power spectra of pressure pulsations in the processes of evaporation/boiling of a liquid at low pressures

This paper presents experimental data on pressure fluctuations during evaporation/boiling of a thin liquid film under conditions of reduced pressure. The experimental data were obtained as a result of studying heat transfer on a smooth horizontal surface in a wide range of changes in the height of the liquid layer. Using the fast Fourier transform, the power spectra of pressure pulsations versus frequency were obtained. It was found that the power spectra of pressure pulsations differ depending on the mode of evaporation/boiling in the system.