ISS Microgravity experiments on flat and perforated capillary plates
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item ISS Microgravity Experiments: Preparation WorkSahoo, Shilpa; Louge, Michel Y.; Desjardins, Olivier (2021-08-26)To study imbibition on Earth, time and distance must be shrunk to mitigate gravity-induced distortion. These small scales make it impossible to observe the inertial and pinning processes in detail. Therefore, the microgravity on the International Space Station (ISS) was exploited to study the imbibition of water into a network of hydrophilic cylindrical capillaries on time and length scales long enough to observe details hitherto inaccessible under Earth gravity. To investigate the role of contact pinning, a text matrix needed to be produced which consisted nine kinds of porous capillary plates made of gold-coated brass treated with Self-Assembled Monolayers (SAM) that fixed advancing and receding contact angles to known values. On Earth, flat, 25% surface fraction and 50% surface fraction brass plates were designed and manufactured. The CAD files of these are presented here. Then they were electrolessly gold-deposited with the help of the group of Prof. Sadik Omowunmi at the University of Binghamton (now at the New Jersey Institute of Technology). The SEM images of these brass and gold-plated samples are also shown here. Then they were coated with SAMs, the MSDS of each chemical are presented here. Additionally, the contact angle measured by goniometry on these plates after SAM coating are exhibited here. Finally, the excerpts of the original NSF proposal for this project; crew procedures for set up, execution and stowage of the ISS experiment and PI science requirements forming the basis of the design by Zin-Technologies has also been presented here.Item ISS Microgravity Experiments: Data AnalysisSahoo, Shilpa; Louge, Michel Y.; Desjardins, Olivier (2021-08-20)To study imbibition on Earth, time and distance must be shrunk to mitigate gravity-induced distortion. These small scales make it impossible to observe the inertial and pinning processes in detail. Therefore, the microgravity on the International Space Station (ISS) was exploited to study the imbibition of water into a network of hydrophilic cylindrical capillaries on time and length scales long enough to observe details hitherto inaccessible under Earth gravity. To investigate the role of contact pinning, a text matrix needed to be produced which consisted nine kinds of porous capillary plates made of gold-coated brass treated with Self-Assembled Monolayers (SAM) that fixed advancing and receding contact angles to known values. In the ISS, astronaut Luca Parmitano slowly extruded water spheres until they touched any of nine capillary plates. The 12mm diameter droplets were large enough for high-speed GX1050C video cameras on top and side to visualize details near individual capillaries, and long enough to observe dynamics of the entire imbibition process. The high-speed videos of spreading and imbibition on the capillary plates were obtained and analyzed. The data analysis is presented here. This contains .mp4translations of the original NASA-generated .avi videos in https://doi.org/10.7298/MKBW-KF79; spreadsheets and Matlab programs for data reduction and the PhD thesis of Shilpa Sahoo explaining the data and their analysis.Item ISS Microgravity Experiments: Raw Data from NASASahoo, Shilpa; Louge, Michel Y.; Desjardins, Olivier (2021-07-09)To study imbibition on Earth, time and distance must be shrunk to mitigate gravity-induced distortion. These small scales make it impossible to observe the inertial and pinning processes in detail. Therefore, the microgravity on the International Space Station (ISS) was exploited to study the imbibition of water into a network of hydrophilic cylindrical capillaries on time and length scales long enough to observe details hitherto inaccessible under Earth gravity. To investigate the role of contact pinning, a text matrix was produced which consisted nine kinds of porous capillary plates made of gold-coated brass treated with Self-Assembled Monolayers (SAM) that fixed advancing and receding contact angles to known values. In the ISS, astronaut Luca Parmitano slowly extruded water spheres until they touched any of nine capillary plates. The 12mm diameter droplets were large enough for high-speed GX1050C video cameras on top and side to visualize details near individual capillaries, and long enough to observe dynamics of the entire imbibition process. The high-speed videos of spreading and imbibition on the capillary plates were obtained and are presented here.