Flow Measurement and Instrumentation

Flow Measurement and Instrumentation 19 (2008) 131137 www.elsevier.com/locate/owmeasinst

Ultrasonic visualization of thermal convective motion in a liquid gallium layer

Yuji Tasaka a, , Yasushi Takeda a , Takatoshi Yanagisawa b
a Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Kita-13, Nishi-8, Sapporo 060-8628, Japan b Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokosuka 237-0061, Japan

Received 17 November 2006; received in revised form 12 January 2007; accepted 21 June 2007

Abstract For low Prandtl number uids including liquid metals, optical methods cannot be utilized to visualize convective motion, and in this paper the velocity prole in a liquid gallium layer was measured using ultrasonic velocity proling, UVP. The applicability of the measurement system was conrmed with the rotating ow of liquid gallium and in the natural convection appearing in a glycerol solution layer. The vessel for the liquid gallium layer was optimized for the acoustic properties of liquid gallium. The measured velocity prole shows a cell like convective motion. The spatio-temporal behavior of large-scale convective motion in turbulent convection was observed as a temporal variation of the velocity prole with two kinds of periodic uctuations of the convection cell. c 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Ultrasonic wave; Thermal convection; Liquid metal; Low Prandtl number; Visualization

1. Introduction Thermal convection induced by a vertical temperature gradient in a shallow uid layer, RayleighB enard convection, is a basic problem in uid dynamics, thermal engineering, and geophysics, but it has not been studied for low Prandtl number ( Pr ) uids. A phase diagram constructed by Krishnamurti [1] suggests that the convection of low Pr uids easily changes from a two-dimensional steady state to a turbulent state via a three-dimensional state and a time dependent state. From theoretical considerations, Busse [2] suggested that RayleighB enard convection is time-dependent at low Rayleigh numbers, and temperature measurements of the convection of mercury support this. Rossby [3] reported that the convection of mercury shows periodic variations in the Nusselt number even in the transition state of the phase diagram. Yamanaka et al. [4] showed that the variation is induced by periodic uctuations

Corresponding address: Division of Energy and Environmental Systems, Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Kita-13, Nishi-8 Sapporo 060-8628, Japan. Tel.: +81 11 706 6373; fax: +81 11 706 7889. E-mail address: tasaka@eng.hokudai.ac.jp (Y. Tasaka).

in temperature in the uid layer in an experimental study using liquid gallium. This kind of periodic phenomenon could be related to large-scale convective motion in the uid layer. However, these studies do not clarify the type of convective motion because the studies only made temperature measurements at a single point. Almost all studies of low Pr convection relied on such temperature measurements because optical visualization cannot be used to observe the convective motion of opaque uids such as liquid metals. This study attempted to visualize the convective motion of low Pr uid by measuring the velocity prole in the uid layer using ultrasonic velocity proling (UVP). Initially, UVP was developed for medical purposes, and it has become a powerful tool in experimental uid dynamics [5, 6] and uid engineering because it can measure instantaneous velocity proles, and can be applied to uid ow of opaque liquids including liquid metal [710]. Results with UVP are superior to optical methods of velocity measurement such as PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry). Thanks to the transmission properties of ultrasonic waves UVP has been applied in industry, for instance in ow metering in large pipes [11] where the container wall is opaque, and also in quality control in food processing [12,13] where uids are generally opaque. Further,

0955-5986/$ - see front matter c 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.owmeasinst.2007.06.003

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advances with this technique using ultrasonic waves have been developed in recent years to extend the range of measurable values [14,15]. The applicability of the measurement system using UVP to the problem investigated here was established with the rotating ow of liquid gallium and thermal convection of a glycerol solution. We measured instantaneous velocity proles in a rectangular vessel lled with liquid gallium ( Pr of around 0.03) heated from below and cooled from above. Comparisons of temporally averaged velocity proles measured at higher or lower positions in the vessel showed that the convective motion is similar to two-dimensional cells at extremely low Rayleigh numbers but that the angular velocity of rotation is not uniform like in two-dimensional cells. A spatio-temporal velocity map is used to represent the two different temporal behaviors of the cell motion; one is a meandering motion maintaining the size of the cell and the other is a repetition of expansions and contraction of the cell. 2. Experimental 2.1. Measurement technique Ultrasonic velocity proling (UVP) utilizes the Doppler shift frequency and ultrasonic (US) echography to determine an instantaneous velocity prole. Fig. 1 shows (a) the basic conguration of the experimental setup, (b) the appearance of the US signals, and (c) a measured velocity prole in the UVP measurement. The US waves emitted from a US transducer propagates in the uid and a part of the waves is reected by the particles of the uid. If there is a sufcient number of particles reecting waves in the uid, the US echo returns from a wide range of directions on the line of propagation of the US waves. Assuming that particles move with the uid, an echo contains Doppler shift frequency, f D , velocity information of the uid ow. Therefore, the instantaneous velocity at a position in the direction of propagation is determined by u (, t ) = c f D /2 f 0 , (1)

Fig. 1. Schematic outline of the UVP measurements; (a) the basic conguration of the experimental setup, (b) the appearance of the US signals, and (c) a measured velocity prole in the UVP measurement. Table 1 Physical properties of liquid gallium [17] Symbol Density Bulk modulus Thermal diffusivity Kinematic viscosity Prandtl number Pr Unit kg/m3 K1 m2 /s m2 /s Value 6.095 1.26 104 1.18 105 3.22 107 0.025

2.2. Liquid gallium Liquid gallium was used as the low Pr uid in this study. An advantage of using liquid gallium as the working uid is its safety. It also has a higher vapor pressure than mercury and does not react with water like sodium. Table 1 shows the physical properties of liquid gallium given by Brito et al. [17]. The UVP (ultrasonic velocity proling) measurements require the suspension of US (ultrasonic) wave reecting particles in the uid. Here, a ne powder of ZrB2 was used; particles are 50 m in diameter and have a density of 6.17 kg/m3 . This kind of powder has also been used in other work of UVP measurements in liquid gallium and has provided good results [18]. Because of the large surface tension of liquid gallium, mixing the ZrB2 particles into the liquid gallium is more difcult than mixing them into water. To reduce the surface tension coefcient, to enable mixing of the particles,

where c and f 0 are the speed of sound in the uid and the basic frequency of the emitted US waves. The sufx in the equation, , shows that the measured velocity is a velocity component of the direction. The position on the axis is determined by the time of ight of the US waves as = c/2. (2)

Repeated wave bursts and reception of the US echos are required to determine the instantaneous Doppler shift frequency f D (t ) accurately. The frequency of repetition of waves, f prf , determines the maximum length where it is possible to measure a velocity prole, , as = c/(2 f prf ). (3)

Further details of the UVP principles are described in Ref. [16].

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Fig. 2. Temperature dependence of the speed of sound in liquid gallium determined by the time of ight method.

during the mixing, the liquid gallium was kept at a high temperature, around 500 C, for 30 min in a furnace. As expressed in Eqs. (1) and (2), the speed of sound in a medium is directly related to the measurement accuracy of both velocity and position with the UVP. Further, the mean temperature of the system depends on the Rayleigh number in the system in this study. Only the speed of sound in liquid gallium at 30 C, close to the melting point of the gallium (29.8 C), has been reported [17,19]. The speed of sound at several temperatures from 30 to 50 C was measured by the time of ight method and the temperature dependence of the speed of sound was determined. Fig. 2 shows that there is a gradual decrease in the speed of sound c with respect to temperature. By a least square estimate, the following relationship is obtained c(T ) = 0.616T + 2891.9. (4)

Fig. 3. Photograph of the experimental apparatus for the trial measurements and supplemental illustration; a rotating magnet is beneath the bottom of the vessel to induce moves in the liquid gallium in the vessel.

Testing liquid gallium was well deoxidized by 10% hydrochloric acidethanol solution before the measurement, and hence there is little inuence of gallium oxide on the relational expression. We performed trial measurements of liquid gallium ow in a simple conguration to conrm the usefulness of the UVP system for measurements with liquid gallium. Fig. 3 is a photograph of the experimental apparatus with a supplemental illustration; the liquid gallium is contained in a 87 mm inner diameter glass beaker, covered with a 10% hydrochloric acidethanol solution to prevent oxidation. A magnetic stirrer, a 0.2 T magnet, is beneath the beaker and the liquid gallium layer is driven by the Lorentz force induced by the rotating magnetic eld of the magnetic stirrer. It was expected that the ow inside the beaker becomes like a Rankine vortex, which consists of a rigid vortex and a free vortex. This system was originally developed for deoxidization of liquid gallium. Ultrasonic (US) waves, with a 4 MHz basic frequency and a 5 mm effective diameter, is emitted from the US transducer outside of the beaker. The velocity prole of the liquid gallium layer along the line of propagation of the US waves, the axis, is obtained by the UVP on a UVP monitor model Duo (MetFlow S. A. [20]). The signal lter in this system is optimized by Met-Flow for measurements of slow ows. Fig. 4 shows an instantaneous velocity prole, where the horizontal and

Fig. 4. Instantaneous velocity prole in the liquid gallium layer measured by UVP, where represents the distance from the ultrasonic transducer and u is the velocity component to the axis.

the vertical axes are the distance from the transducer and the velocity. The velocity is largest at the center and decreases toward the wall of the vessel. The measurement axis is located at a small distance from the center line of the beaker, and the prole is consistent with expectations. The estimated rotating speed near the center is 1 rps at the surface of the liquid gallium layer. Assuming that the ow near the center conrms to rigid body rotation, the maximum velocity on the measured line is 90 to 100 mm/s, and would suggest that the measured velocity is quantitatively accurate. 2.3. Experimental setup To determine the convective motion in a liquid gallium layer, a rectangular vessel was constructed. The vessel for the liquid gallium consists of three parts, the glass side walls, top and bottom copper plates, 25 mm thick, with grooves for owing water to control the temperature. Fig. 5 shows a schematic outline of the vessel, where the top and the bottom gures show horizontal and vertical cross sections of the vessel. It is 50 mm high ( L ), 200 mm wide (=4 L ) and 50 mm deep (= L ) with this shape, uid layer ows would be restricted to a

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(a) Horizontal cross section.

(b) Side view and vertical cross section.

Fig. 5. Schematic outline of the experimental apparatus holding the liquid gallium, units in mm. Table 2 Acoustic properties of liquid gallium and Pyrex glass, where the reection coefcient of liquid gallium is dened as Rg = ( Z g Z )/( Z g + Z ), with Z g the acoustic impedance of liquid gallium Symbol Acoustic impedance Sound speed (longitudinal wave) Reection coefcient (for liquid gallium) Z c Rg Unit 106 kg/(m2 s) m/s Liquid gallium 17.4 2860 Pyrex glass 13.1 5640 0.14 Plexiglas 3.2 2730 0.69

convective ow pattern. It was expected that a cell like pattern would appear with an axis of rotation parallel to the y axis. The side walls of the vessel are made of Pyrex glass which can be wetted with liquid gallium. The acoustic impedance of Pyrex glass is very close to that of liquid gallium as shown in Table 2, and hence the ultrasonic (US) waves pass through the side wall, rather than the other parts of the vessel (the reection coefcient for US waves passing through the Pyrex grass to the liquid gallium, Rg , is one fth lower than that for Plexiglas, as shown in the table). The top and the bottom plates are made of copper and are held in place with 15 mm thick acrylic plates. There is a circular 12 mm diameter channel at the top of the copper plates. The temperature of the owing water in the channels was controlled by thermostatic baths. The water ows kept the surface temperatures of the top and the bottom plates constant. The cooling temperature T1 (top plate) was kept a higher temperature than the melting temperature of gallium (29.8 C), at 32 C, and the Rayleigh numbers were varied in the R = 200800 Rc range by changing the heating temperature T2 . The Rayleigh number R is dened as R= g(T2 T1 ) L 3 , (5)

Fig. 6. Schematic outline of a lling process of liquid gallium to the vessel: (1) air in the vessel was removed using a vacuum pump through two holes drilled in the top plate and a buffer tank (2) liquid gallium (Ga) was poured into the vessel with pressurized by argon gas (Ar).

where g , , , and are the gravity acceleration, bulk modulus, thermal diffusivity, and kinematic viscosity of liquid gallium respectively; Rc is the critical Rayleigh number of Rayleigh B enard convection in a shallow uid layer, Rc = 1707.7 [21]. Liquid gallium oxidizes easily, and the air in the vessel was removed using a vacuum pump through two 10 mm diameter holes drilled in the top plate with a buffer tank for liquid gallium which was poured into the vessel with pressurized argon gas through the 10 mm diameter hole (Fig. 6). Gallium pouring in to the vessel was well deoxidized. The US wave transducer was

placed at one end of the vessel and US wave bursts emitted by the transducer propagated in the gallium layer parallel to the x direction. Silicon oil was used as a coupler between the transducer and the Pyrex glass plate to prevent existing air layer in the very thin gap. The US wave bursts were at a 4 MHz basic frequency and a 5 mm effective diameter, resulting in a spatial resolution of the measured velocity prole in the liquid gallium layer, , of around 1.4 mm. 3. Results and discussions 3.1. Flow patterns Liquid gallium is opaque and it is difcult to make direct comparisons between a measured velocity prole and the actual

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Fig. 7. (a) Temporally averaged velocity prole of the convective motion in glycerol solution, and (b) Sketch of observed convective motion in glycerol solution. u x represents the x axis velocity component of the convective motion.

convective pattern. To establish whether the prole and the pattern are similar, UVP measurements and observations of the convective motion were performed in a transparent glycerol solution. Fig. 7 shows the results of the measurements for a 28 wt% glycerol solution ( Pr 18). The uid layer is 200 mm wide, 30 mm deep, and 20 mm high. The side walls are Plexiglas, and the top and the bottom plates are aluminum and copper respectively. Flowing, temperature controlled water maintained a constant temperature at the top and bottom boundary of the uid layer. The Rayleigh number, determined from the temperature difference between the top and bottom boundaries, is around 800 Rc . 80 m nylon powder was used as tracer particle and its density is quite similar to the solution. Fig. 7(a) shows a temporally averaged velocity prole obtained from 1024 instantaneous proles, where u x represents the velocity component on the x axis. Fig. 7(b) shows the location of the transducer and illustrates the observed convection pattern. As shown in the gure, the formed convection pattern is a quasitwo-dimensional cell, with axis of rotation perpendicular to the measurement direction. The convective motion is unsteady and the size of the cells change temporally; however, the width of cells do not become larger than the height of the uid layer. The measured velocities vary in the measured direction and attain alternately positive and negative values. In comparison with the observed convection pattern, the variations between positive and negative values correspond to the motion in individual cells. At a set Rayleigh number, the convective motion is dominated by separated thermal boundary layers at the top and the bottom boundaries, and hence the rotation of a cell may be seen to be similar to a rigid vortex. A velocity prole would show a at distribution without boundaries between cells when the rigid vortex is measured by the UVP along a line. The obtained velocity, however, includes both at and sinusoidal proles; suggesting that some movement in some of the cells differs from that of a rigid vortex.

Fig. 8. Temporally averaged velocity prole of the convective motion in liquid gallium layer determined at (a) a low and (b) a high position. u x represents the x axis velocity component of the convective motion.

Fig. 8 shows temporally averaged velocity proles measured at a high and a low position in the uid layer of liquid gallium, the horizontal axis x represents the distance from the ultrasonic (US) transducer. The sampling period of the prole is 80 ms and 1024 proles were used in the averaging, the spatial resolution on the x axis is 1.44 mm. The Rayleigh number is 770 Rc where convective motion is turbulent. The proles are not smooth but somewhat broken. As mentioned in the next section, we consider that it may be due to rather imperfection of seeding than turbulent motion. Low in the uid layer (Fig. 8(a)), the velocity prole has two pairs of variations in the velocity between positive and negative values in the uid layer. The measured velocity is from 10 to 10 mm/s. At the higher position (Fig. 8(b)), the velocity oscillates and the measured velocity prole is approximately symmetrical to that measured at the lower position. The range of velocities at the higher position is similar to that determined at the lower position. A comparison with the results in the glycerol solution (Fig. 7) suggests that there are two pairs of cells with axis of rotation parallel to the y axis. The motion of the cells is quite different for a rigid vortex because the velocity does not show a at prole but has mainly a sinusoidal prole. At the set Rayleigh number, 770 Rc , the convection is turbulent according to the ow regime diagram [1] and hence the convection displays multi-scale motion. The obtained velocity prole shows the large-scale motion of the cells, and it is not possible to accurately determine small-scale motion using the current UVP system because of the low speeds of the convective motion. 3.2. Spatio-temporal behavior The UVP (ultrasonic velocity proling) can measure an instantaneous velocity prole, and this makes it possible

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(a) R = 428 Rc .

(b) R = 770 Rc . Fig. 9. Spatio-temporal velocity prole. Color represents velocity, and counter clockwise rotation of a cell is represented by yellow and clockwise rotation by green.

to investigate the spatio-temporal variation in large-scale convective motion. Fig. 9 shows the spatio-temporal velocity distributions measured at R = 428 Rc and 770 Rc , where the horizontal and vertical axes are the time and position measured low in the uid layer, the colors represent velocity values. Black points in the gures represent data voids caused by a lack of particles to reect the ultrasonic waves and the shape of the particles. The ZrB2 powder is shaped like powder grains and its irregular surface scattered the ultrasonic waves. In comparison with the temporally average velocity prole (Fig. 8), it is possible to distinguish two cells in these gures. At R = 428 Rc , there are four convection cells in the uid layer (Fig. 9(a)); counter clockwise rotation of a cell is represented by yellow and clockwise rotation by green. The cells sway as expressed by the movement of the boundary between yellow and green. Small-scale velocity uctuations are superimposed on the large-scale uctuation, but it is difcult to evaluate the small-scale phenomena because the smallscale uctuations are only a few times the velocity resolution of the measurements, O (1 mm/s), and are indistinguishable from the noise in the signals. The band enclosed by the broken red line shows repeated expansion and contraction of the cell maintaining the position on the x axis as shown in Fig. 10(a). This movement is very slow with a period of approximately 60 s (corresponding to 0.017 Hz of frequency). At the higher Rayleigh number, R = 770 Rc , the motion of the convection cell is different (Fig. 9(b)). There are still four cells of the same size as with the lower Rayleigh number, but the cell enclosed by the broken red line moves periodically on the x axis without changes in size as shown in Fig. 10(b) different from the convective motion in Fig. 9(a).

Fig. 10. Schematic illustration of motion in a convection cell; (a) repeated expansion and contraction of the cell maintaining the position on the x axis, (b) meandering motion with maintaining the size of the cell.

Further, the motion of the neighbouring cell corresponds to that observed at the lower Rayleigh number. Convective motion is faster than at the lower Rayleigh number and the frequency determined by Fourier analysis is 0.059 Hz. Simultaneous measurements of temperature uctuations by a thermistor shows the corresponding frequency. Selection of the uctuation pattern shown in Fig. 9 is alternative; it cannot be determined which uctuation pattern is chosen at each Rayleigh number because the selections of the uctuation pattern and the number of the cells are strongly dependent on initial condition and boundary condition, e.g. initial temperature distribution in liquid gallium, temperature difference between the boundaries and the gallium, etc. This is typical in many instability phenomena. It is conrmed that there are three states of convection with different number of cells; two, three or four. Generally, it is difcult to control the number of cells. 4. Concluding remarks Ultrasonic velocity proling, UVP, was used to investigate large-scale convective motion of a low Prandtl number uid.

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The applicability of the measurement technique was conrmed in rotating liquid gallium and in the thermal convection of a glycerol solution. The vessel for the liquid gallium was designed to solve problems of wetting and permeability of ultrasonic waves, and the velocity prole measured at lower and higher positions in the uid layer showed convection cells in the liquid gallium layer. The spatio-temporal velocity eld measured by the UVP expressed different motions of convection cells, including repeated expansion and contraction and periodical meandering motion. The large-scale motion has been discussed with temperature variations at a point in the uid layer [3]; however, the spatio-temporal behavior has not previously been discussed for ow patterns and is shown in this study for the rst time. The measurement system here cannot detect small-scale motion in the natural convection because of a lack of data due to an insufcient number of tracer particles, and the ZrB2 powder used in this study is shaped like powder grains and not optimum for UVP measurements. It would be possible to compensate for this by optimizing the shape of the tracer particles. Acknowledgement This work is supported by Grant-Aided Research for Science of the Japanese Ministry of Education & Science: No.18760116 and No.18204038. The authors express thanks for this support. References
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