Paper Number
GI11 My Program
Session
Gallery of Rheology - Images
Title
Event-based capillarity-driven extensional rheometry
Presentation Date and Time
October 22, 2025 (Wednesday) 6:30
Track / Room
Gallery of Rheology Session: Images / Sweeney Ballroom E+F
Authors
- Warwaruk, Lucas N. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering)
- McKinley, Gareth H. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering)
Author and Affiliation Lines
Lucas N. Warwaruk and Gareth H. McKinley
Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139
Speaker / Presenter
Warwaruk, Lucas N.
Keywords
experimental methods; rheometry; techniques
Text of Abstract
Capillarity-driven extensional rheometry is a widely used technique for measuring the extensional viscosity of low-viscosity liquids. It leverages the Rayleigh–Plateau instability and surface tension to induce uniaxial deformation in a thinning liquid filament. By tracking the filament radius over time, key rheological properties—including extensional viscosity—can be inferred. While effective, this method typically requires high-speed imaging, making it costly in terms of both equipment and data storage. To address these limitations, we introduce a novel approach using an event-based imaging system to perform capillarity-driven extensional rheometry. Event-based cameras detect changes in light intensity rather than capturing full frames, enabling adaptive sampling rates based on scene activity. This eliminates the need for user-defined frame rates and dramatically reduces data requirements. Our method achieves comparable accuracy in measuring filament radius and extensional viscosity at roughly 20 % of the cost of a conventional high-speed camera. Moreover, data storage is reduced by two orders of magnitude: a typical 12-bit, 1 MPixel high-speed recording may require ~1 GB, whereas an event-based recording uses only ~10 MB. This event-driven imaging paradigm offers a transformative alternative for capturing high-speed free-surface flows, making capillarity-driven extensional rheometry significantly more accessible and cost-effective for a broader range of researchers and applications.