By applying specific equipment and adapting measurement parameters several types of experiments can be performed. Most common AUC experiments are sedimentation velocity and sedimentation equilibrium experiments.
Sedimentation velocity Sedimentation velocity experiments render the shape and molar mass of the analytes, as well as their size-distribution. The size resolution of this method scales approximately with the square of the particle radii, and by adjusting the rotor speed of the experiment size-ranges from 100
Da to 10 GDa can be covered. Sedimentation velocity experiments can also be used to study reversible chemical equilibria between macromolecular species, by either monitoring the number and molar mass of macromolecular complexes, by gaining information about the complex composition from multi-signal analysis exploiting differences in each components spectroscopic signal, or by following the composition dependence of the sedimentation rates of the macromolecular system, as described in
Gilbert-Jenkins theory. The experiment aims to monitor the sedimentation behavior at a fixed angular speed.
Sedimentation equilibrium Sedimentation equilibrium experiments reports the molar mass of analytes and their
chemical equilibrium constants. The rotor speed is adjusted such that a steady-state concentration profile c(r) of the sample in the cell is formed, where sedimentation and diffusion cancel out each other.
Density gradient centrifugation ==Data evaluation==