Experiments on thermal drift
Ayumu Inasawa, K. Hara, J. M. Floryan
Abstract
Thermal drift is a horizontal flow driven by a pattern interaction effect occurring on a solid surface; that is, the flow is driven by an interaction between surface topography and the heating pattern applied to the surface. The interaction generates surface forces through projection of the convective pressure field onto the surface topography—these forces drive the flow. The existence of thermal drift is demonstrated experimentally. Its basic characteristics, that is, variations of the strength and direction of the resulting flow as a function of the relative position of both patterns, were determined experimentally and theoretically. An excellent agreement between both sets of data has been demonstrated.