Development of low-cost vision-based falling sphere viscometer

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.