TY - JOUR TI - Motion of viscous liquids and air bubbles in narrow gaps under high gravity DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3377BR3 PY - 2016 AB - Removal of entrapped air bubbles is generally the rate-limiting step in the conventional bonding of laminates. This thesis describes a new technique to bond laminates together by using centrifugal acceleration to drive a liquid adhesive between laminates and remove initially entrapped air bubbles. The authors studied the effect of “high gravity” (~50 g’s generated using a centrifuge) on air bubbles sandwiched in a 100-micron gap. Some of the bubble diameters were larger than the gap between the laminates (factors ranging from 5 to 80), which meant there was significant variation of air bubble shapes due to the walls of the gap. The drag on the bubbles came from both the walls and the surrounding liquid, and these sandwiched bubbles traveled more slowly than theoretical spherical equivalents in an unconstrained medium. Comparisons between experimental drag on the flattened bubbles and theoretical drag on spherical equivalents show that the bubbles studied had significant increases in coefficients of drag – factors ranging from nearly 2 to 280. In addition to studying the motion of air bubbles in a narrow gap, this work provides the experimental protocol to laminate thin transparent sheets together with liquid adhesive. Using this protocol with modest centrifugal acceleration, it was possible to remove bubbles from the gaps with 5 minutes of spinning. This process has the potential to become an effective manufacturing method for laminating various types of components to each other, such as sheets of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), or ultra-thin glass used in touchscreens or stacked laminates in transparent, impact-resistant windows. KW - High-gravity KW - Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering KW - Viscosity LA - eng ER -