Propulsion via buoyancy driven boundary layer
Author(s)
Doyle, Brian Patrick
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Advisor
Thomas Peacock.
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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).
Date issued
2011Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical EngineeringPublisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords
Mechanical Engineering.