at one time the petroleum industry relied on measuring kinematic viscosity by means of the saybolt viscometer, and expressing kinematic viscosity in units of saybolt universal seconds (sus). other abbreviations such as ssu ("saybolt seconds universal") or suv ("saybolt universal viscosity") are sometimes used. kinematic viscosity in centistokes can be converted from sus according to the arithmetic and the reference table provided in astm d 2161.