Propulsion via buoyancy driven boundary layer
Name
880147126-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
1.21 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
beb5c972fdef204a4d059ed1ac3719d0
Author(s)
Doyle, Brian Patrick
Advisor(s)
Thomas Peacock.
Date Issued
2011
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Heating a sloped surface generates a well-studied boundary layer flow, but the resulting surface forces have never been studied in propulsion applications. We built a triangular wedge to test this effect by mounting a resistive heating pad to one of its conducting sloped surfaces. We submerge the wedge within a two-layer water stratification, turn the heater on and track the wedge's motion. We have observed a propulsion speed of 0.613 ± 0.042 mm/s with a temperature difference between the heated surface and ambient fluid of 4°C. We also use theory and numerics to predict the propulsion speed and predicted a speed of 1.43 mm/s, within an order of magnitude of the observed results, and thus our model was validated by the experiments.
Description
Thesis: S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2011.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (page 31).
Subjects
Mechanical Engineering.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
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