This study reported here was aimed at testing the shear cell that was developed for the satellite mission Foton-M1 to measure diffusion coefficients in liquid metals under micro-gravity conditions. Thick layer diffusion experiments were performed in the system Sn90In10 versus Sn under 1g-conditions. For this system several micro-gravity diffusion results were available as reference data. This combination provides a low, but sufficiently stable, density layering throughout the entire experiment, which was important to avoid buoyancy-driven convection. The experimental results were corrected for the influences of the shear-induced convection and mixing after the final shearing, both of which were typical for the shear cell technique. As the result, the reproducibility and the reliability of the diffusion coefficients in the ground-based experiments were within the limits of error of micro-gravity data.

Ground-Based Diffusion Experiments on Liquid Sn-In Systems using the Shear Cell Technique of the Satellite Mission Foton-M1. S.Suzuki, K.H.Kraatz, G.Frohberg: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2004, 1027, 169-81