Abstract
A saline oscillator is a device that consists of a small container with salt water and a tiny hole in the bottom. The small container is partially submerged into a larger container with distilled water. First, as expected, a jet of salt water falls into the larger container, but after a certain time the jet becomes unstable, a jet of distilled water starts going up, and an apparently periodic motion is installed. The global structure of the flow has been visualized using a technique sensitive to the density gradients, called shadowgraph. The velocity fields have been measured using particle image velocimetry (PIV). The flow rate has been measured as a function of time. Not all instabilities lead to a change of direction of the flow, so different flow patterns can be observed. With a pair of electrodes inserted in each container, a voltage signal with the same period of oscillation as the flow has been obtained. The interval of time when the flow goes down is always larger than the interval of time going up. Some experimental results that do not agree with other authors are presented.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Dr. Zenit and his collaborators for their help in some of the experiments, also Cesar Aguilar and Dr. Alvarado. We acknowledge the support of DGAPA UNAM through project PAPIME PE104907.
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Salazar Romero, Y., Stern, C. (2012). The Saline Oscillator: Visualization Using Shadowgraphs and Particle Image Velocimetry. In: Klapp, J., Cros, A., Velasco Fuentes, O., Stern, C., Rodriguez Meza, M. (eds) Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Fluid Dynamics. Environmental Science and Engineering(). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17958-7_43
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17958-7_43
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