The heat convection of a near critical fluid in the controlled microaccelerations field under zero-gravity condition Original Research Article

The given work is devoted to studying of thermo-inertional and thermovibrational convection of the fluid in conditions of orbital flight. The experimental cell contained the fluid SF6 near to a critical point and the source of heat in the working volume. This system was subjected to vibrations or micro-accelerations in background regime. The analysis of experimental data has shown that there is an essential influence of vibrations on the character of distribution of the optical inhomogeneity caused by local heating. It is found out, that depending on pulsation frequency of inertial field, the micro-acceleration causes an appearance either average fine-scale thermovibational motion, or the oscillatory jet of convective flow in scale of a cavity with frequency that is close to the modulation frequency. Ground-based modeling the thermovibrational convective motion is carried out. Results are well agreed with the phenomenon observed in space experiment.