A sounding rocket experiment on the marangoni convection

During a 6-minutes free flight of a sounding rocket an experiment on the thermal Marangoni convection in a right circular cylindric floating zone was carried out to verify the thermal Marangoni convection by flow visualisation for the first time at 10^?4 g. From the motion picture analysis the velocity distributions are obtained. The interdependence between the two velocity maxima and the S-shaped temperature distribution on the free surface is discussed. The influence of the heat transfer caused by the flow of the surrounding air induced by the thermal Marangoni convection itself is considered briefly.