Thermocapillary convection induced by laser surface heating

Thermocapillary convection was excited by a laser source in experiments on molten paraffin. The parameters of the resultant flow were determined. The nature of the flow was demonstrated to correspond to shear-driven boundary-layer flow at high Reynolds numbers. Correlation dependences of the flow velocity of the melt and its temperature in the surface region were derived theoretically and were shown to agree with the experimental results. When the size of the laser spot was much less than the characteristic convection scales, three regions of flow of the melt could be distinguished: a viscous surface boundary layer, a stagnation zone under the laser spot, and a large-scale region of flow with a homogeneous temperature distribution.