Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Trinh, E. H..
Millimeter-radius liquid shells are acoustically levitated in an ultrasonic field. Capillary waves are observed on the shells. At low energies (minimal acoustic amplitude, thick shell) a resonance is observed between the symmetric and antisymmetric thin film oscillation modes.
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Ultrasonic positioning of single fluid particles in gas and liquid host environments has been used to.
Non-contact methods have been implemented in conjunction with levitation techniques to carry out the measurement of the macroscopic properties of liquids significantly cooled below their nominal melting point. Free suspension of the sample and remote methods allow the deep excursion into the metastable liquid state and the determination of its thermophysical properties. We used this approach to investigate common substances such as water, o-terphenyl, succinonitrile, as well as higher temperature melts such as molten indium, aluminum and other metals. Although these techniques have thus far involved ultrasonic, electromagnetic, and more recently electrostatic levitation, we restrict our attention to ultrasonic methods in this paper. The resulting magnitude of maximum thermal supercooling achieved have ranged between 10 and 15% of the absolute temperature of the melting point for the materials mentioned above. The physical properties measurement methods have been mostly novel approaches, and the typical accuracy achieved have not yet matched their standard equivalent techniques involving contained samples and invasive probing. They are currently being refined, however, as the levitation techniques become more widespread, and as we gain a better understanding of the physics of levitated liquid samples.
Ultrasonic and electrostatic leviation techniques have allowed the experimental investigation of the nonlinear oscillatory dynamics of free droplets with diameter between 0.1 and 0.4 cm. The measurement of the resonance frequencies of the first three normal modes of large amplitude shape oscillations in an electric field of varying magnitude has been carried out with and without surface charges for weakly conducting liquids in air. These oscillations of nonspherical levitated drops have been driven by either modulating the ultrasonic field or by using a time-varying electric field, and the free decay from the oscillatory state has been recorded. A decrease in the resonance frequency of the driven fundamental quadrupole mode has been measured for increasing oblate deformation in the absence of an electric field. Similarly, a decrease in this frequency has also been found for increasing DC electric field magnitude. A soft nonlinearity exists in the amplitude dependence of the resonant mode frequencies for freely decaying as well as ultrasonically and electrically driven uncharged drops. This decrease in resonance frequency is accentuated by the presence of free surface charge on the drop. Subharmonic resonance excitation has been observed for drops in a time-varying electric field, and hysteresis exists for resonant modes driven to large amplitude. Mode coupling from lower-order resonances to higher-order modes has been found to be very weak, even for fairly large amplitude shape oscillations. Most of these results are in general agreement with predictions from recent analytical and numerical investigations.
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The complete or partial deployment of liquid samples in low gravity is primarily influenced by the interfacial properties of the specific liquid and solid materials used because the overwhelming bias of the Earth gravitational acceleration is removed. This study addresses the engineering aspects of injecting and deploying drops of prescribed volume into an acoustic positioning chamber in microgravity. The specific problems of interest are the design, testing, and implementation of injector tips to be used in a simuttaneously retracting dual-injector system used in the Drop Physics Module microgravity experiment facility. Prior to release, the liquid to be deployed must be retained within a restricted area at the very end of the injectors even under dynamic stimuli due to continuous injection flow as well as to the stepped motion of the injectors, and the final released drop must have a well determined volume as well as negligible residual linear or angular momentum from the deployment process. The outcome of Earthbased short-duration low gravity experiments had been the selection of two types of injector tips which were flown as back-up parts and were successfully utilized during the USML-1 Spacelab mission. The combination of a larger contact surface, liquid pinning with a sharp edge, and selective coating of strategic tip surfaces with a non-wetting compound has allowed a significant increase in the success rate of deployment of simple and compound drops of aqueous solutions of glycerol and silicone oil. The diameter of the samples studied in the Drop Physics Module ranged between 0.3 and 2.7 cm. The tests conducted onsrbit with a manually operated small device have allowed the calibration of the volume deployed for a few drop sizes. The design for improved tips to be used during the next USML flight is based on these results.
The complete or partial deployment of liquid samples in low gravity is primarily influenced by the interfacial properties of the specific liquid and solid materials used because the overwhelming bias of the Earth gravitational acceleration is removed. This study addresses the engineering aspects of injecting and deploying drops of prescribed volume into an acoustic positioning chamber in microgravity. The specific problems of interest are the design, testing, and implementation of injector tips to be used in a simultaneously retracting dual-injector system in the Drop Physics Module microgravity experiment facility. Prior to release, the liquid to be deployed must be retained within a restricted area at the very end of the injectors under dynamic stimuli from the continuous injection flow as well as from the stepped motion of the injectors. The final released drop must have a well determined volume and negligible residual linear or angular momentum. The outcome of Earth-based short-duration low gravity experiments had been the selection of two types of injector tips which were flown as back-up parts. They were successfully utilized during the USML-1 Spacelab mission as the primary tips. The combination of a larger contact surface, liquid pinning with a sharp edge, and selective coating of strategic tip surfaces with a non-wetting compound has allowed a significant increase in the success rate of deployment of simple and compound drops of aqueous solutions of glycerol and silicone oil. The diameter of the samples studied in the Drop Physics Module range between 0.3 and 2.7 cm. The tests conducted on-orbit with a manually operated small device have allowed the calibration of the volume deployed for a few drop sizes. The design for improved tips to be used during the next USML flight is based on these results.
Steady-state acoustic streaming flow patterns have been observed during the operation of a variety of resonant single-axis ultrasonic levitators n a gaseous environment and in the 18 to 37 KHz frequency range.
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In alloys, solidification takes place along various paths which may be ascertained via phase diagrams; while there would be no single formula applicable to all alloys, an approximate formula for a specific solidification path would be useful in estimating the fraction of the solid formed during recalescence. A formulation is here presented of recalescence in binary eutectic alloys. This formula is applied to Ag-Cu alloys which are of interest in containerless solidification, due to their formation of supersaturated solutions.
Supercooling of a liquid prior to the nucleation of a solid and the subsequent rapid growth are necessary conditions for producing novel microstructures including metastable phases which are not formed by conventional solidification processes. Since containerless techniques, such as levitation and free fall of a sample, are capable of achieving a significant supercooling level of liquids, they are under consideration as possible techniques for material processing on earth and in space.
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The heats of eutectic melting and devitrification, and the specific heats of the crystalline, glass, and liquid phases have been measured for a Ni24Zr76 alloy. The data are used to calculate the Gibbs free-energy difference, Delta G(AC), between the real glass and the crystal on an assumption that the liquid-glass transition is second order. The result shows that Delta G(AC) continuously increases as the temperature decreases in contrast to the ideal glass case where Delta G(AC) is assumed to be independent of temperature.
Contamination due to oxygen or oxide layer formation is a major concern in containerless processing of metallic melts.
The heat of fusion and the specific heats of the solid and liquid have been experimentally determined for a Ti60Cr40 alloy. The data are used to evaluate the Gibbs free energy difference, delta-G, between the liquid and the beta phase as a function of temperature to verify a reported spontaneous vitrification (SV) of the beta phase in Ti-Cr alloys. The results show that SV of an undistorted beta phase in the Ti60Cr40 alloy at 873 K is not feasible because delta-G is positive at the temperature. However, delta-G may become negative with additional excess free energy to the beta phase in the form of defects.