Buoyancy and Natural Convection in Photocurable Resins: Temperature, Density, Composition and Feature Distortion

Qualification of buoyancy-driven flow fails when temperature, composition and conversion are collapsed into one empirical setting. Polymerisation heat can destabilise an initially quiescent vat, while filler settling creates solutal density stratification that may reinforce or oppose thermal convection. The review therefore couples Rayleigh-type regime analysis with particle or tracer velocimetry, synchronised temperature mapping, density and viscosity measurements, and vertical composition sampling. Reversing vat or specimen orientation provides a discriminating test because it changes the buoyant direction without changing the optical exposure. These measurements define when natural convection can be neglected and when it must be treated as part of the process state used for profile transfer.

ER-353.