Capillary wave turbulence experiments in microgravity

Using the FLUIDICS (Fluid Dynamics in Space) experiment in the International Space Station, turbulence of capillary waves at the air-water interface is experimentally investigated in weightlessness. Capillary waves are excited in a spherical container partially filled with water and undergoing sinusoidal or random oscillations. The fluctuations of the interface, recorded with two capacitive probes are analyzed by means of the frequency power spectrum of wave elevation. For high enough forcing amplitudes, we report power-law spectra with exponents close to the prediction of weak wave turbulence theory. However, in this experiment the free-surface steepness is not small compared to 1 and thus the investigated regimes correspond to strongly nonlinear wave turbulence. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2020.