Liquid motion in partially filled containers: Preliminary results of the D-1 mission

Experiment WL-FPM-08, or also: FLIM, has been executed in the FPM on the D-1 mission. The experiment is a continuation of an earlier one on Spacelab-1, and seeks to study capillary liquid flow in transparent models of spacecraft tanks. A typical dimension in a container is five centimeters.

Six experiment runs have been conducted with liquid in a straight cylinder container with hemispherical ends. The flight results are recorded on cine film that is processed for photogrammetric data. The liquid, water, remained at one end of the container throughout the experiments and showed a stuck contact line with the wall (perspex). Since the liquid contained bubbles and the contact line was non-circular, interpretation of the results is not straightforward.

For axisymmetric configurations a computer program, SAVOF, has been developed at NLR for numerical simulations of the liquid flow. The dependence of the lowest axisymmetric resonance of the liquid on the contact line (stuck) position has been calculated both for a non-rotating and a rotating tank. The flight results are generally in line with the numerical results.