Liquid bridges are liquid volumes that are held, by surface tension, between two or more rigid supports. They occur in a variety of natural and technological processes ranging from the floatzone crystal growth technique to porous media flow and are important in situations as diverse as low-gravity fluids management and fluid behavior in microairways during respiration. In this work we have examined the dynamical behavior and stability of a variety of liquid bridge configurations with emphasis on bridges that are held between coaxial circular supports, although liquid configurations in partially filled containers are also considered. The poster presentation will summarize our experimental, theoretical and numerical work on the stability and dynamics of liquid bridges, with particular emphasis on nonaxisymmetric bridges and axisymmetric bridge configurations that lose stability to nonaxisymmetric perturbations.
Iwan, J., Alexander, D., Slobozhanin, L.A., Resnick, A.H., Dynamics and Stability of Liquid Bridges, Fifth Microgravity Physics Transport Phenomena Conference, NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH, CP-2000-210470, pp. 1278-1279, August 9, 2000.