The Thermocapillary Motion of Spherical Droplet Parallel to the Plane Walls

Abstract

The thermocapillary motion velocity of single spherical droplet will be calculated ignoring the flow inertia and the temperature. Applying the value of temperature gradient to that is parallel to the flat plate will be its driving force, and assuming that the droplets will be kept doing spherical motion without deformation. The boundary conditions of the plate can be discussed in two situations: the linear distributions of adiabatic and temperature. When the liquid drops approach to the plate, one of the boundary effects of the plate comes from the gradient interaction of the temperature between the droplet and the plate, and the other comes from the viscosity effect of the fluid. This chapter uses the boundary collocation method to calculate the fluid in the thermocapillary of the viscosity ratio, thermal conductivity ratio as well as the separation parameters velocity, and comparing the calculated results from the reflection method. Their results are consistent. As for the plate boundary effect, due to the characteristics of the droplets, the relative distance of the droplet with the flat plate, and the boundary conditions of the different plane walls, the fluid droplet velocity can be increased or reduced.