The levitation method is useful for measuring thermophysical properties of high temperature melts, The gas lift method is simple and low cost to hold the melts. In addition, it is a useful method of holding melts of materials with low electrical conductivity and chargeability, especially metallic oxide elements. But the effect of gas inflow on measured values of the viscosity has not been clarified. In this study, the surface oscillation of a sample droplet lifted by the gas-lift method was simulated by OpenFOAM. Numerical results were compared with an analytical solution of the surface oscillation without any external force. As a result, the gas flow damped the surface oscillation and caused the overestimation of the viscosity.
Takashima et al. (Wed,) studied this question.