Hydrothermal instability of thermocapillary convection in large-Prandtl-number liquid bridges under microgravity

The predicted critical Marangoni numbers and critical frequencies were compared with data from space experiments. The disturbance of the temperature distribution on the free surface causes the onset of oscillatory convection. It is shown that the origin of instability is related to the hydrothermal origin for convections in large-Prandtl-number liquid bridges.