News

Mechanical engineering professor Mark Weislogel’s Capillary Flow Experiments (CFE) were performed on the International Space Station in late August and early September. NASA Astronaut Jeff Williams appears here with one of the "hand-held" experiments which probe both fundamental and applied phenomena relevant to fluids management in space.

Weislogel reports that he and mechanical engineering graduate student Ryan Jenson remained basically on call for these experiments. When the word came down from NASA that some crew time was available, they were often called to leave on a moment’s notice.

“One time I was called at 9:00 a.m. to be in Cleveland, Ohio at the Glenn Research Center at midnight," said Weislogel. “I left straight from work and purchased some clean clothes and a toothbrush when I got off the plane. We aren’t suffering though. This is a BLAST!”

The Capillary Flow Experiments are a suite of fluid physics flight experiments whose purpose is to investigate large length scale capillary flows and phenomena in low gravity. CFE data will be crucial to America’s Space Exploration Initiative as pertains to fluids management systems (i.e., fuels/cryogen storage systems, water collection and recycling, thermal control systems, and materials processing in the liquid state). NASA’s current plans for exploration missions assume the use of larger liquid propellant masses than have ever flown on interplanetary missions. Under low gravity conditions, capillary forces can be exploited to control fluid orientation so that such large mission-critical systems perform more reliably.

Weislogel plans to submit the findings from the CFE data for publication in Physics of Fluids, the AIAA Journal, and Experiments in Fluids.