A Review of the Marangoni Convection Experiment in TR-IA #6

Abstract

A microgravity experiment on Marangoni convection in a liquid bridge onboard the sounding rocket 6 launched in September 1997, is reviewed. The experiment aimed at clarifying in detail the unsteady behaviors of the convection at a high Marangoni number by means of a combination of sophisticated measuring techniques. However, the experiment suffered from an unexpected and crucial problem with liquid-bridge formation, making scientific interpretation of the data obtained diffi cult. Nevertheless, the data analysis well demonstrated the power of instrumentations adopted in this experiment, and to be used in the future experiments in the International Space Station, for the study of unsteady behaviors of Marangoni convections in liquid bridges.