A2.2 Fluid Science Experiments Conducted on the ISS

Symposium: A2. IAF MICROGRAVITY SCIENCES AND PROCESSES
Session: 2 – Fluid and Materials Sciences
Room: Bremen 2
Time: 09:45

In a liquid mixture composed of several components, a temperature gradient leads to the heat and mass transport, i.e., thermodiffusion or Soret effect. With the aim to establish reliable and guaranteed convection-free reference data on thermodiffusion, ESA has created instrument SODI (selectable optical diagnostics instrument) which is placed on the ISS. While examining a binary solution, the IVIDIL, the first experiment inside the SODI, confirmed that (a) the daily onboard environment of the ISS does not perturb diffusion-controlled experiments and (b) the results obtained onboard the ISS are reliable. Currently, DCMIX (Diffusion Coefficients in MIXtures) project is focused on the investigation of the ternary mixtures. Another topic of the research on the ISS is related to Marangoni convection. The space experiment JEREMI (Japanese European Space Research Experiment on Marangoni Instabilities) is aimed to the study of the threshold of hydrothermal instabilities in two-phase systems in cylindrical geometry.