Hot-Wire Method for Kinematic Viscosity Estimation

This paper explores the characterization of thermal and momentum diffusion properties of condensed phase biological fluids. The widely used transient hot-wire technique for determination of thermal diffusion properties is proposed here to investigate also the apparent kinematic viscosity of fluids with the apparatus commonly adopted for thermal conductivity and/or thermal diffusivity determination. The undesired onset of convection in the determination of thermal diffusion properties is in this case the useful effect measured at the wire–fluid interface. From a theoretical point of view, the onset of convection time at a given vertical position along the wire has been related to the Prandtl number, and the reliability of the kinematic viscosity has been studied and preliminarily tested in the case of water.