Dynamic Fluid Interface Experiments Aboard the International Space Station: Model Benchmarking Dataset

Abstract

DOI: 10.2514/1.47343 This paper introduces a video database reduced from the handheld capillary flow contact line experiments completed aboard the International Space Station during expeditions 9–16, August 2004–November 2007. The simple fluid interface experiments quantify the uncertain impact of the boundary condition at the contact line: the region where liquid, gas, and solid meet. This region controls many significant static and dynamic characteristics of the large length scale capillary phenomena critical to multiphase fluids management systems aboard spacecraft. Differences in fluid behavior of nearly identical static interfaces to nearly identical perturbations are attributed primarily to differences in fluid physics in the vicinity of the contact line. Free and pinned contact lines, large and small contact angles, and linear and nonlinear perturbations are tested for several manually imparted perturbation types(i.e.,axial,slosh,andothermodes)torightcircularcylinders.Thevideoandsampledigitizeddatasetsaremade publiclyavailableformodelbenchmarking.Asademonstrationoftheutilityofthedatabase,andinparallelwiththe experimental effort, blind numerical predictions of the dynamic interface response to the experimentally applied inputperturbationsareofferedasanexampleofcurrentcapabilitiestopredictsuchphenomena.Theagreementand lack of agreement between the experiments and numerics is a guide to improve or verify current analytical methods to predict such phenomena critical to practical spacecraft fluid systems design.