Development of low-cost vision-based falling sphere viscometer

Abstract

Falling sphere viscometer is one of the most commonly used techniques in experimentally determining fluid viscosity. This method requires the measurement of the terminal velocity of a falling sphere inside the fluid, which remains a challenging and costly task, especially if high precision is required. This paper presents the development of a low-cost visionbased falling sphere viscometer. The velocity measurement is performed by incorporating two linear image sensors which allow faster frame rate. A specific object detection algorithm based on background subtraction is developed to analyze the image data in real-time. The experimental setup and implementation are also presented.