Physical sciences research plans for the International Space Station.

The restructuring of the research capabilities of the International Space Station has forced a reassessment of the Physical Sciences research plans and a re-targeting of the major scientific thrusts. The combination of already selected peer-reviewed flight investigations with the initiation of new research and technology programs will allow the maximization of the ISS scientific and technological potential. Fundamental and applied research will use a combination of ISS-based facilities, ground-based activities, and other experimental platforms to address issues impacting fundamental knowledge, industrial and medical applications on Earth, and the technology required for human space exploration. The current flight investigation research plan shows a large number of principal investigators selected to use the remaining planned research facilities.

Compressibility effects on steady streaming from a noncompact rigid sphere.

The problem of steady streaming around a rigid isolated sphere in a plane standing acoustic field is considered. Existing results in the literature have been generalized to allow for noncompactness of the sphere, and the influence of fluid compressibility on the streaming behavior has been included. It is found that in the high-frequency limit of interest for which the streaming is strongest, the effective steady slip velocity at the edge of the inner boundary layer region that is responsible for driving the steady streaming in the bulk of the fluid in the outer region, has a complex variation over the surface of the sphere that depends on (i) the sphere position (with respect to the node/antinode of the acoustic field), (ii) the extent of sphere compactness, and (iii) on a well-defined function (representing compressibility effects) of the fluid Prandtl number and its ratio of specific heats. Not surprisingly, the contribution from this function is negligible when the host fluid is a liquid. The steady streaming behavior around the sphere is demonstrated with the help of flow streamlines for various cases in the diffusive limit of weak outer flow for low streaming Reynolds numbers.

Internal circulation in a drop in an acoustic field.

An investigation of the internal flow field for a drop at the antinode of a standing wave has been carried out. The main difference from the solid sphere case is the inclusion of the shear stress and velocity continuity conditions at the liquid-gas interface. To the leading order of calculation, the internal flow field was found to be quite weak. Also, this order being fully time dependent has a zero mean flow. At the next higher order, steady internal flows are predicted and, as in the case of a solid sphere, there is a recirculating layer consisting of closed streamlines near the surface. In the case of a liquid drop, however, the behavior of this recirculating Stokes layer is quite interesting. It is predicted that the layer ceases to have recirculation when [formula: see text], where [symbol: see text] is the liquid viscosity, mu is the exterior gas-phase viscosity, and M is the dimensionless frequency parameter for the gas phase, defined by M = i omega a2 rho/mu, with a being the drop radius. Thorough experimental confirmation of this interesting new development needs to be conducted. Although it seems to agree with many experiments with levitated drops where no recirculating layer has been clearly observed, a new set of experiments for specifically testing this interesting development need to be carried out.