Combined thermosolutal buoyancy and surface-tension flows in a cavity

Abstract

In this article, the thermosolutal buoyancy and surface-tension convection flows are numerically studied with a fourth-order Runge-Kutta time-splitting finite element method. The physical model for a square cavity containing a top free surface and two different temperature and concentration side walls is described by the Navier-Stokes, energy and species concentration equations. On the track of flow pattern, the existence of surface tension will alter the evolution of the flow field and influence the local heat and mass transfer rates near the top free surface. In addition, the surface tension dominated flow field under a zero-gravity condition is studied for r = 0 and 1 to investigate the interaction between thermal surface tension and solutal surface tension. The results show that temperature and concentration make opposing contributions to the flow and display local variance in temperature and concentration distributions near surface boundary.