Publicado 4 números por año
ISSN Imprimir: 1065-3090
ISSN En Línea: 1940-4336
Indexed in
AXIAL JET-INDUCED MIXING IN LOW GRAVITY: RESULTS OF THE REDUCED-FILL TANK PRESSURE CONTROL EXPERIMENT
SINOPSIS
The Reduced-Fill Tank Pressure Control Experiment (TPCE/RF) is a space experiment developed to meet the need for a critical aspect of cryogenic fluid management technology: control of storage tank pressures in the absence of gravity by forced-convection mixing. The experiment used Freon-113 at near-saturation conditions at a constant 40% fill level to simulate the fluid dynamics and thermodynamics of cryogenic fluids in space applications. The objectives of TPCE/RF are to characterize the fluid dynamics of an axial jet-induced mixing in low gravity, evaluate the validity of empirical mixing models, and provide data for use in developing and validating computational fluid dynamics model of mixing processes. TPCE/RF accomplished all of its objectives inflight on the Space Shuttle flight in May 1996. The flow patterns observed generally agreed with a prior correlation derived from drop tower tests. Several existing mixing correlations were found to provide reasonable performance predictions. Low-energy mixing jets, dissipating on the order of 1% of the kinetic energy of previous mixer designs, were found to be effective and reliable at reducing thermal nonuniformities, promoting heat and mass active mixing, whether continuous or periodic, offers increased reliability and predictability in space cryogenic systems and can be accomplished with no significant boiloff penalty caused by kinetic energy dissipation.
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Marchetta Jeffrey G., Benedetti Robert H., Simulation of Jet-Induced Geysers in Reduced Gravity, Microgravity Science and Technology, 22, 1, 2010. Crossref