EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS FOR VISCOSITY MEASUREMENTS PERFORMED ON THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION USING DROP COALESCENCE IN MICROGRAVITY

Current commonly use viscosity measurement techniques cannot be used for all types of fluids. For fluids in the under cooled region a new method of measuring the viscosity is required. A process of viscosity measurement, by measuring the speed of droplet coalescence in a microgravity environment, was developed. This paper analyses validation experiments performed on the International Space Station. Four experiments were analyzed. Two of the experiments provided results consistent with the known value for the viscosity. One of the experiments did not provide sufficient data for analysis. The final experiment had possible errors due to the experimental setup. The resulting data from these experiments demonstrated that the method is feasible. However, more experiments are needed to fully verify the process.