Abstract
The experimental study on thermocapillary convection of low Prandtl number fluid was carried out to investigate the transition behavior to oscillatory flow. The half-zone liquid bridge of molten tin was used as a test fluid. It can be detected that the steady thermocapillary convection changes to oscillatory under certain condition. In addition to experimental work, a numerical study was also performed to understand the experimentally observed temperature fluctuations. It could be experimentally detected that a slow oscillation (∿0.02Hz) appeared after the onset of oscillatory flow, and then the oscillation became faster (∿0.3Hz) when the temperature difference ΔT increased. The numerical simulation which traced the experimental temperature history for boundary conditions could explain the experimental result very well.
