Mechanical and Thermal Tests of the Containers of Liquid Mirrors

We give a generic description of a liquid mirror system and summarize some practical information useful to making them. We compare laboratory measurements of deformations, due to the weight of mercury on the container of a 3.7-m mirror and to temperature changes on a 1-m container, to finite element computer simulations. We find that the measurements agree reasonably well with the numerical simulations. The measurements on the 1-m container show no evidence of fatigue after a few thermal cycles. These results validate the computer models of containers described in a companion article.