Simulated microgravity in the ring-sheared drop

Patrick M McMackin; Shannon R Griffin; Frank P Riley; Shreyash Gulati; Nicholas E Debono; Aditya Raghunandan; Juan M Lopez; Amir H Hirsa

doi:10.1038/s41526-019-0092-1

Simulated microgravity in the ring-sheared drop

NPJ Microgravity. 2020 Jan 3:6:2. doi: 10.1038/s41526-019-0092-1. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Patrick M McMackin¹, Shannon R Griffin¹, Frank P Riley¹, Shreyash Gulati¹, Nicholas E Debono¹, Aditya Raghunandan¹, Juan M Lopez², Amir H Hirsa³

Affiliations

¹ 1Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180-3590 USA.
² 2School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287 USA.
³ 3Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering (also, Chemical and Biological Engineering), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180-3590 USA.

Abstract

The ring-sheared drop is a module for the International Space Station to study sheared fluid interfaces and their influence on amyloid fibril formation. A 2.54-cm diameter drop is constrained by a stationary sharp-edged ring at some latitude and sheared by the rotation of another ring in the other hemisphere. Shearing motion is conveyed primarily by the action of surface shear viscosity. Here, we simulate microgravity in the laboratory using a density-matched liquid surrounding the drop. Upon shearing, the drop's deformation away from spherical is found to be a result of viscous and inertial forces balanced against the capillary force. We also present evidence that the deformation increases with increasing surface shear viscosity.

Keywords: Biophysics; Fluid dynamics.