We report experimental evidence of convection caused by translational vibration of nonuniformly heated fluid in low gravity. The theory of vibrational convection in weightlessness is well developed but direct experimental proof has been missing. An innovative point of the experiment is the observation of a temperature field in the front and side views of the cubic cell. In addition, particle tracing is employed. The evolution of this field is studied systematically in a wide range of frequencies and amplitudes. The flow structures reported in previous numerical studies are confirmed. The transition from four-vortex flow to the pattern with three vortices is observed in the transient state.

Vibrations acting on a fluid with density gradient induced by temperature variations can cause relative flows. High-frequency vibration leads to the appearance of time-averaged (mean) flows (or streaming flows), which can essentially affect heat and mass transfer processes. This phenomenon is most pronounced in the absence of other external forces (in particular, static gravity). In this work, an extensive experimental and computational study of thermal vibrational convection in a reduced-gravity environment of a parabolic flight is performed. The transient evolution of the temperature field in a cubic cell subjected to translational vibration is investigated by optical digital interferometry. The mean flow structures previously reported in numerical studies are confirmed. The transition from four-vortex flow to a pattern with a large diagonal vortex and two small vortices is observed in the transient state. The experiments reveal a significant enhancement of heat transfer by vibrational mean flows with increasing the vibrational strength. Three-dimensional direct numerical simulation with real microgravity profile and two-dimensional numerical modelling based on averaging approach provide a very good agreement with the experimental results. The influence of residual gravity on heat transfer and bifurcation scenario is first investigated numerically and correlated with the experimental data. It is demonstrated that gravity effects on non-uniformly heated fluids can be reproduced in weightlessness by applying vibrations to the system.

The IVIDIL (Influence of VIbrations on DIffusion in Liquids) experiment was aimed at utilizing the International Space Station for investigating the effects of vibrations on liquid diffusion and thermodiffusion. The SODI-IVIDIL project of ESA is gathering together European, Canadian and Russian researchers with complementary skills to prepare and carry out the experiment, to process the raw data and perform numerical modeling of the phenomena. The experiment IVIDIL started on the October 5, 2009. In total 55 experimental runs were successfully completed by 20 January, 2010. A general description of the ISS facility related to the diffusion experiments and accessible for European researchers is briefly presented and some details about IVIDIL instrument are given. The scientific interest of this short article is focused on one of the objectives of the experiment: performing precise measurements of diffusion and thermodiffusion coefficients for binary mixtures in the absence of gravity. We demonstrate possibility of the experimental environment and report on the first results related to measurements of mass transport coefficients in the mixture with the negative Soret effect: 10% isopropanol (IPA)–90% water.