Tracing Thermal Creep and Thermophoresis in Porous Structures at Low Ambient Pressure and Low Gravity

We carried out two types of drop tower experiments to quantify gas and particle motion induced by temperature gradients inside a porous structure in a low pressure environment. In one setup 400 μm sized particles were traced inside heated channels at pressures of a few Pascal. Their motion is consistent with pure thermophoresis. In the second setup tracer particles were used to track the thermal creep gas flow through a porous dust bed. Here, the flow was traced outside of the dust bed and without thermophoretic motion. The results are consistent with a simple capillary model of the dust bed.