Behringer, R. P. | Engineering Papers

NASA NTRS1999

Gravity and Granular Materials

We describe experiments that probe a number of different types of granular flow where either gravity is effectively eliminated or it is modulated in time. These experiments include the shaking of granular materials both vertically and horizontally, and the shearing of a 2D granular material. For the shaken system, we identify interesting dynamical phenomena and relate them to standard simple friction models. An interesting application of this set of experiments is to the mixing of dissimilar materials. For the sheared system we identify a new kind of dynamical phase transition.

Behringer, R. P.↗

NASA NTRS1985

Critical Transport Phenomena in Fluid Helium Under Low Gravity

The feasibility of carrying out measurements of certain critical transport properties of pure fluid under conditions of low gravity was studied. These properties are the thermal conductivity, kappa, the shear viscosity zeta and the diffusive relaxation time tau, which are predicted to diverge (tend to infinity) as the liquid-vapor critical point is approached. However, in this critical region, the Earth's gravity effect becomes very important. As the critical point is approached, the gravity effects increasingly distort the results. The reason for this is that the compressibility of the fluid also diverges and under the influence of gravity causes a vertical density gradient in the fluid, which is significant even when very thin fluid layers (typically 1 mm high) are being used. The result is that the temperature dependence of kappa, zeta, and tau tends to flatten off as T sub c is approached instead of continuing to increase, and therefore the predictions from the renormalization group and mode coupling theories cannot be subjected to a satisfactory test.

Meyer, H.↗