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Updated: May 11, 2026

Reduced-gravity Environment Hardware Demonstrations of a Prototype Miniaturized Flow Cytometer and Companion Microfluidic Mixing Technology
Published on: November 13, 2014
Granular convection and the Brazil nut effect in reduced gravity
Carsten Güttler1, Ingo von Borstel, Rainer Schräpler
1Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Kobe University, Kobe 657-8501, Japan.
Abstract:
We present laboratory experiments of a vertically vibrated granular medium consisting of 1-mm-diameter glass beads with embedded 8-mm-diameter intruder glass beads. The experiments were performed in the laboratory as well as in a parabolic flight under reduced-gravity conditions (on Martian and Lunar gravity levels). We measured the mean rise velocity of the large glass beads and present its dependence on the fill height of the sample containers, the excitation acceleration, and the ambient gravity level. We find that the rise velocity scales in the same manner for all three gravity regimes and roughly linearly with gravity.
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