Abstract
Drop towers continue to provide unique capabilities to investigate capillary flow phenomena relevant to terrestrial and space-based capillary fluidics applications. In this study certain ‘capillary rise’ flows and the value of drop tower experimental investigations are briefly reviewed. A new analytic solution for flows along planar interior edges is presented. A selection of test cell geometries are then discussed where compound capillary flows occur spontaneously and simultaneously over local and global length scales. Sample experimental results are provided. Tertiary experiments on a family of asymmetric geometries that isolate the global component of such flows are then presented along with a qualitative analysis that may be used to either avoid or exploit such flows. The latter may also serve as a design tool with which to assess the impact of inadvertent container asymmetry.
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Bolleddula, D.A., Chen, Y., Semerjian, B. et al. Compound Capillary Flows in Complex Containers: Drop Tower Test Results. Microgravity Sci. Technol. 22, 475–485 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12217-010-9213-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12217-010-9213-x