Thermocapillary motion of deformable fluid particles in tubes

The boundary integral technique is used to study the effect of deformation on the steady, creeping, thermocapillary migration of a fluid particle under conditions of axisymmetry, negligible thermal convection and an insulated tube wall. The spherical radius of the fluid particle (i.e. the radius as if the particle were a sphere, a ′= (3V _p ^′ /4π)^1/3, V _p ^′ is the particle volume) and that of the tube are denoted, respectively, by a′and b′. For small capillary numberCa = 0.05, only for a large fluid particle (a′/b′ = 0.8) is deformation significant. Fora′/b′= 0.8, hydrodynamic stresses squeeze the particle, reduce the interaction of the particle with the wall and thereby increase the terminal velocity. For small particles a′/b′< 0.8 and Ca = 0.05 the fluid particles translate as spheres, due to the fact that the fluid particle is too far away from the wall to be subject to distending hydrodynamic stresses. The deformable particle moves faster than a spherical one in the thermocapillary migration. The increase in velocity with capillary number is larger for thermocapillary motion than for buoyancy.