Enhanced Particle Tracking in STDC Data and Its Industrial Application of Marangoni Convection

The primary objective this grant was to extract and understand the detailed thermo-fluid mechanics of the original NASA Surface Tension Driven Convection Experiment (STDCE-1) performed in microgravity, using modern diagnostic and computational tools. The study aims to revitalize the original video data found in PSI by applying advanced Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and Particle Tracking Velocimetry (PTV) methods, which provide higher resolution, sub-pixel accuracy, and robust flow field extraction compared to the limited analyses available in the early 1990s. By systematically comparing velocity and pressure fields obtained from these reanalyzed datasets with theoretical perturbation methods and COMSOL Multiphysics computational models, the project seeks to isolate the fundamental role of Marangoni convection and interfacial curvature in driving oscillatory and steady-state flows. Complementary ground-based experiments incorporating gravitational effects will be conducted to disentangle the relative contributions of buoyancy and surface tension-driven convection. These objectives ultimately support both NASA’s PSI solicitation by expanding the scientific return from legacy datasets and advancing applied understanding for industrial processes that rely on controlled Marangoni flows, such as wafer drying, thin-film coating, and microfluidic device operation.