THERMO-CAPILLARY CONVECTION IN FLOATING ZONE-MELTING - INFLUENCE ZONE GEOMETRY AND PRANDTL NUMBER AT ZERO GRAVITY

For silicon, changes in zone size and shape altered only slightly the appearance of the streamlines for a fixed value of the dimensionless thermocapillary flow parameter. However significant changes were noted in the heat and mass transfer and in the magnitude of the dimensionless vorticity. Steady state solutions were also obtained for sapphire with electron beam heating, but could not be obtained with radiant heating. This suggests that oscillatory flow might easily be produced with radiant heating of high Prandtl number materials. © 1979.