Abstract
The effect of free surface heat transfer on the onset of oscillatory thermocapillary flow of high Prandtl number fluid is investigated in open cylindrical containers. The critical conditions are determined experimentally. The air flow above the container is simulated numerically for the experimental conditions and the free surface heat transfer rate is computed. The experiment covers both heat loss and gain conditions. It is shown that the free surface heat transfer does not affect the critical conditions within the parametric ranges of the present experiment. This is quite a contrast from the situation for the liquid bridge configuration where the critical condition is known to be very sensitive to the free surface heat transfer.
