Presentation on two-phase microgravity research at GRC with particular emphasis on ISS

Motil, Brian

NASA Technical Reports Server

National Aeronautics and Space Administration 
www.nasa.gov 
Gravity Dependent Two-Phase Research 
at the 
NASA Glenn Research Center 
 
 
 
Brian J. Motil, NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH   
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https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140017389 2019-08-31T14:56:34+00:00Z
Fluids in Space 
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1957: The same year that Sputnik-1 orbited the planet – Robert Siegel 
(GRC) conceived a drop tower experiment to study a force often 
masked by gravity yet critical to almost every life form. 
 
 
1962: The first “fluids” experiment was conducted in space on  the  
 Mercury-Atlas 07 by Scott Carpenter to study the liquid-vapor 
 interface in a baffled tank in weightlessness.  
 (NASA TN D-1577, 1963). 
 
 
1995: The Colloidal Disorder-Order Transition (CDOT) shuttle 
 flight experiment tested fundamental theories that model 
 atomic interactions in USML-2 on Columbia. 
 
 
2001: Physics of Colloids in Space (PCS) flew as the first US Rack Level 
experiment on the ISS. 
 
 
TODAY…. 
Complex Fluids 
• Colloids 
• Liquid crystals 
• Foams 
• Granular flows  
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Fluid Physics 
• Two-phase flow 
• Phase separation 
• Boiling, condensation
• Capillary and  
    interfacial phenomena 
 
 
 
Fluid Physics and Complex Fluids Today 
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The Capillary Flow Experiment (CFE 1&2) -2004 through 2014  
• Series of handheld vessels with various test chamber 
geometries to investigate the behavior of capillary flow 
phenomena in wicking structures such as interior corners and 
small gaps created by a vane and the test chamber wall. 
• The working fluid is silicone oil of various viscosities, 
depending on the individual unit geometry.   
• The results of CFE have applications in propellant 
management for fluid storage tanks, thermal control systems, 
and advanced life support systems for spacecraft. 
• Critical wetting vane angles have been determined to within 
0.5 degrees for Vane Gap 1 and 2 experiments. 
• A bulk shift phenomena has been characterized that has  
implications for tank designs.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
Astronaut Karen Nyberg adjusting the liquid 
volume during a CFE-2 Interior Corner Flow 9 
(ICF9) experiment on ISS (June 15, 2013) 
45°vane angle in 
microgravity. 
45°vane angle in 
earth gravity. Interior Corner Flow Modules (ICF3, ICF 8 and ICF9) 
PI: Prof. Mark Weislogel, Portland State University 
Capillary and Interfacial Phenomena 
Capillary and Interfacial Phenomena 
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PI: Prof. Michael Dreyer, ZARM 
US Co-I:  Prof. Mark Weislogel, Portland State University 5 
Astronaut Scott Kelly installing CCF in 
MSG in Dec 2010. 
Capillary Channel Flow Test Unit 1 
(flat plate and groove geometries) 
The Capillary Channel Flow (CCF) Experiment 2011–2014  
• Led by the German Space Agency (DLR) with a US/NASA Co-
Investigator. 
• Study of open channel capillary flow in microgravity.  
– The cross section of the flow path is partly confined by free 
surfaces. 
• Experiment has led to high fidelity models that accurately predict 
maximum flow rates for an open capillary channel 
• Research is critical to on-orbit fuel transfers and in space 
propulsion systems that utilize capillary vanes.  
– Current design of spacecraft fuel tanks rely on additional 
reservoirs (higher mass) to prevent the ingestion of gas into 
the engines during firing.  
Gas-Liquid  Phase Separation  
Flow Regime Map 
Capillary Channel Flow Test Unit 2 
(interior corner (wedge) geometry) 
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Constrained Vapor Bubble (CVB) Experiment – 2009 & 2013 
• Prototype for a wickless heat pipe in microgravity – based  
on corner flows. 
• Used pure Pentane as operating fluid for first set of experiments.  
• Provided fundamental transport data including the overall stability, 
 flow characteristics, average heat transfer coefficient in the evaporator, 
and heat conductance as a function of heat flow rate and vapor volume. 
• Interferometry technique obtained direct measurements of fluid curvature 
and thickness. 
• Visualized film stability and shape of dry out regions with a microscope 
in detail never obtained before in microgravity. 
• CVB-2 (2013) extended data to a binary mixture rather than a pure fluid 
(Pentane – Isohexane). 
• Discovered a new limit for heat pipe operation:  Marangoni or Flooding 
limit.  
• First performance limitation is flooding, not dryout of the heater end. 
• Wickless designs can pump more than enough liquid to the heater end. 
• Flooding limitation can be broken by the addition of a second, liquid, 
component.  This may be the origin of reported enhancements using 
mixtures. 
• Unexpected phenomena were observed and enhanced in microgravity 
including meniscus oscillations, autophobic droplet formation, and 
controlled single bubble nucleation phenomena ( a hybrid pool/flow 
boiling experiment not accessible in 1-g environments). 
 
 
Marangoni limit and 
flooding of heater end with 
flow streamlines. 
Unexpected Explosive 
Nucleation in 0-g. PI: Prof. Joel L. Plawsky, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 
Co-I: Prof. Peter C. Wayner, Jr., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 
Boiling (Evaporation) and Condensation   
Boiling and Condensation 
Boiling eXperiment Facility (BXF) – 2011 
• BXF included two separate pool boiling investigations: 
– Microheater Array Boiling Experiment (MABE)  
– Nucleate Pool Boiling Experiment (NPBX). 
• Advanced understanding of local boiling heat transfer 
mechanisms & critical heat flux in microgravity for nucleate 
and transition pool boiling. 
• Detailed measurements of bubble growth, detachment and 
subsequent motion of single and merged (larger) bubbles. 
• Developed a criteria for Boiling Transition 
• Buoyancy Dominated Regime (BDB) 
– Heat transfer by bubble growth and departure 
– Heat flux increases with gravity 
• Surface Tension Dominated Regime (SDB) 
– Dominated by the presence of a non-departing primary bubble 
– Effect of residual gravity is very small 
• Transition Criteria based on Capillary Length 
 
 
 
 
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0 
0 
W
/c
m
2 
Multiphase Flow and Heat Transfer Experiment (MFHT) - 2020 
• Will develop models that incorporate two-phase flow regimes and fluid conditions to 
predict local heat transfer coefficients from subcooled nucleate boiling through critical 
heat flux (CHF) and dryout. 
• Will obtain local measurements of the wall heat transfer coefficient with high temporal 
and spatial resolution using an infrared video (IR) camera. 
 
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PI: Prof. Jungho Kim, University of Maryland 
PI: Prof. Vijay K. Dhir, University of California, LA 
(Top) Paulo Nespoli installing BXF in 
MSG. (Middle  left) Coalescence of 
vapor bubbles on NPBX wafer. 
(Middle  right) Subcooled nucleate 
boiling in g. The MABE microheater 
array is colorized with actual heat flux 
data. (Bottom) Transition of boiling 
Heat Flux as a function of 
acceleration. 
ESA PI: Catherine Colin, Institut de Mecanique des Fluides 
Co-I: Prof. Jungho Kim, University of Maryland 
Two-Phase Flow (adiabatic) 
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Packed Bed Reactor Experiment (PBRE) - 2015  
• Will investigate the role and effects of gravity on gas-liquid flow 
through porous media which is a critical component in life-support; 
thermal control devices; and fuel cells. 
• Will validate and improve design and operational guidelines for gas-
liquid reactors in partial and microgravity conditions. 
• Preliminary models predict significantly improved reaction rates in 0-g.  
• Models developed from early 0-g aircraft tests led to the successful 
operation of IntraVenous fluid GENeration (IVGEN) in 2010 providing 
the ability to generate IV fluid from in situ resources on the ISS. 
• Provides test fixture to test future two-phase flow components. 
Dynamics of Liquid Film/ Complex Wall Interaction (DOLFIN II) 
• ESA led experiment to develop continuum models to describe 
interactions between spreading fluids and chemically and/or 
morphologically complex surfaces using 0-g environment. 
• Developing the ability to manipulate surface flows in microgravity is a 
key to thermal management solutions in space exploration. 
• US PI (Yarin) will perform experiments on spray cooling over specially 
patterned surfaces. 
Volatile Reactor Assembly (VRA) on 
STS 89 
IVGEN Deionizing resin bed 
Drop impact onto a porous target 
PI: Dr. Brian Motil, NASA GRC 
Co-I: Prof. Vemuri Balakotaiah, U. of Houston 
US Co-I: Prof. Alexander Yarin, University of Chicago 
ESA PI:  Prof. Cameron Tropea, Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Aerodynamics (SLA) 
Technische Universität Darmstadt 
Cold Finger 
Mixing/Cooling: 
Sub-Cooled Jet 
 LAD 
Broad Area Cooling: 
Radiative Loss to Cooled 
Isolation-Jacket 
NonCondensable Pressurant 
 Mixing/Cooling: 
Spray-Bar  
Boiling and Condensation 
Zero Boil-Off Tank Experiment (ZBOT) - 2014  
• Will study storage tank pressurization & pressure reduction 
through fluid mixing in microgravity (ZBOT-1). 
• Add the effects of non-condensable gasses (ZBOT-2). The 
presence of non-condensables produces barriers to the 
transport of  vapor to and from the interface creating 
gradients of the gaseous concentrations along the interface 
may give rise to Marangoni convection. This changes the 
pressurization and pressure reduction rates. 
• ZBOT-3 will characterize tank thermal destratification and 
pressure reduction through active cooling schemes for: (i) 
sub-cooled jet mixing (ii) droplet spray-bar mixing; and (iii) 
broad area cooling with intermittent mixing. 
• ZBOT provides an instrumented test section with 
controllable BCs; velocimetry; and flow visualization. 
  
 
ZBOT EU 
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PI: Dr. Mohammad Kassemi, NCSER 
Co-I: Dr. David Chato, NASA, GRC 
Effect of Noncondensable on Flow and  
Temperature Fields during Jet cooling  
Pressure Control 
Pure Vapor - Cool 
Jet envelopes the 
Ullage  
Marangoni Flow Due to   
Noncondensable Impedes 
Penetration of Cool jet 
around the Ullage 
Boiling and Condensation 
Flow Boiling and Condensation Experiment (FBCE) – 2017 
• Will develop mechanistic models for microgravity flow boiling Critical Heat Flux (CHF) and 
dimensionless criteria to predict the minimum flow velocities required to ensure gravity-
independent CHF along with boiling heat transfer coefficients and pressure data 
correlations. 
• Will develop mechanistic model for microgravity annular condensation and dimensionless 
criteria to predict minimum flow velocity required to ensure gravity-independent annular 
condensation; also develop correlations for other condensation regimes in microgravity. 
• Recently concluded successful 0-g aircraft testing for flow boiling CHF and condensation. 
• Approach will be to develop an integrated flow boiling/condensation experiment to facility 
follow-on researcher. 
 
 
 
 
Critical Heat Flux (CHF) data and model 
predictions for microgravity and Earth gravity 
for  flow boiling. 10 
PI:  Prof. Issam Mudawar, Purdue University 
Co-I: Dr. Mojib Hasan, NASA GRC 
 
Gas-Liquid Separation Devices 
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Reduced Gravity 
Bubble Vortex 
Cyclonic Concepts 
Two-Phase Flow Separator Experiment (TPFSE) – 2018  
• Two PI Teams will share common test hardware to study different aspects.
• Will address the design and performance of passive two-phase flow separator 
technologies. 
• Determine range of flow rates for acceptable performance.  
• Quantify the effect of fluid properties and separator geometry. 
• Determine separator response and stability envelope to startup, shutdown and liquid 
slugging conditions. 
• Passive separation is critical to high reliability and low power gas-liquid systems for used 
in thermal control and life support. 
Pumped Separator for PBRE PI: Dr. Georges Chahine and Xiongjun Wu, DynaFlow, Inc.  PI: Prof. Yasuhiro Kamotani, Case Western Reserve University 
Co-I:  Prof. Jaikrishnan Kadambi, Case Western Reserve University 
Boiling and Condensation 
Two-Phase Electro-hydrodynamics (EHD) Conduction-Driven Heat Transport 
Device – 2020 
• Will develop fundamental understanding and physical models to characterize the 
effects of gravity on the interaction of electric and flow fields in the presence of phase 
change.  
• Will characterize electrowetting effect on boiling and CHF in the absence of gravity. 
• Electro-wetting of the boiling section will repel the bubbles away from the heated 
surface in microgravity environment.  
 
 
 
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PI: Prof. Jamal Seyed-Yagoobi, Worcester Polytechnic Institute 
Co-I: Jeffrey Didion, NASA GSFC 
• Micro-scale devices have extremely high heat 
fluxes due to the small heat transfer surface 
area. 
• Provides a robust, non-mechanical, lightweight, 
low-noise and low-vibration device.  
• Recently concluded successful 0-g  
 aircraft testing demonstrating EHD pump works 
well in 0-g. 
 
 
 
• The nature of low-gravity applications and limited access to the low-gravity 
environment creates unique difficulties in the creation of reliable predictive (CMFD) 
models. 
• Integrating modeling and experiment provides a potentially productive approach, 
especially if DNS is included as a supplement to experiments.   
• Unique opportunity exists for limited experiments on ISS in this decade to resolve 
microgravity two-phase flow challenges. These are critical to many areas of 
spaceflight (power, propulsion, life support, thermal control, etc.). 
• There is also a strong need to simply build a quality database of operating 
parameters for the most common components particularly those that can either 
operate in a more efficient manner in 0-g or those that solve common anomalies 
faced in 0-g fluids systems that frequently bring an entire system off-line until it can 
be fixed or replaced. 
State of the Art in Two-Phase Flow 
Horizontal pipe on Earth. 
Aboard the Space Shuttle. 
 
The radically different flow morphologies require different 
theoretical models in order to be able to predict these flows. 
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Gravity Dependent Two-Phase Research at the NASA Glenn Research Center

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