Dynamic Free-surface Deformations in Axisymmetric Liquid Bridges

Thermocapillary convection is a surface tension driven flow due to a temperature gradient along an interface. It occurs during a crystal-growth process and therefore understanding the convection is important to material processing in microgravity. Although modelling of the float-zone crystal-growth process has been of interest for a few decades, most studies of liquid bridges assumed non-deformable flat surfaces. In reality, the surface profile, g(t,z), is unknown and should be obtained as a solution to the coupled transport equations along with the surface force balance. Here we report on a numerical study of axisymmetric thermocapillary convection in liquid bridges with deformable surfaces. The interface is determined as part of the complete solution. The influence of the capillary number (Ca), Reynolds number (Re), Prandtl number (Pr) and aspect ratio(Ar) on the dynamics is explored.