No Arabic abstract
The motion of a large, neutrally buoyant, particle, freely advected by a turbulent flow is determined experimentally. We demonstrate that both the translational and angular accelerations exhibit very wide probability distributions, a manifestation of intermittency. The orientation of the angular velocity with respect to the trajectory, as well as the translational acceleration conditioned on the spinning velocity provide evidence of a lift force acting on the particle.
We investigate the effects of turbulent fluctuations on the Lagrangian statistics of absorption of a scalar field by tracer particles, as a model for nutrient uptake by suspended non-motile microorganisms. By means of extensive direct numerical simulations of an Eulerian-Lagrangian model we quantify, in terms of the Sherwood number, the increase of the scalar uptake induced by turbulence and its dependence on the Peclet and Reynolds numbers. Numerical results are compared with classical predictions for a stationary shear flow extended here to take into account the presence of a restoring scalar flux. We find that mean field predictions agree with numerical simulations at low Peclet numbers but are unable to describe the large fluctuations of local scalar uptake observed for large Peclet numbers. We also study the role of velocity fluctuations in the local uptake by looking at the temporal correlation between local shear and uptake rate and we find that the latter follows fluid velocity fluctuations with a delay given by Kolmogorov time scale. The relevance of our results for aquatic microorganisms is also discussed.
The statistics of velocity differences between very heavy inertial particles suspended in an incompressible turbulent flow is found to be extremely intermittent. When particles are separated by distances within the viscous subrange, the competition between quiet regular regions and multi-valued caustics leads to a quasi bi-fractal behavior of the particle velocity structure functions, with high-order moments bringing the statistical signature of caustics. Contrastingly, for particles separated by inertial-range distances, the velocity-difference statistics is characterized in terms of a local H{o}lder exponent, which is a function of the scale-dependent particle Stokes number only. Results are supported by high-resolution direct numerical simulations. It is argued that these findings might have implications in the early stage of rain droplets formation in warm clouds.
We investigate the response of large inertial particle to turbulent fluctuations in a inhomogeneous and anisotropic flow. We conduct a Lagrangian study using particles both heavier and lighter than the surrounding fluid, and whose diameters are comparable to the flow integral scale. Both velocity and acceleration correlation functions are analyzed to compute the Lagrangian integral time and the acceleration time scale of such particles. The knowledge of how size and density affect these time scales is crucial in understanding partical dynamics and may permit stochastic process modelization using two-time models (for instance Saw-fords). As particles are tracked over long times in the quasi totality of a closed flow, the mean flow influences their behaviour and also biases the velocity time statistics, in particular the velocity correlation functions. By using a method that allows for the computation of turbulent velocity trajectories, we can obtain unbiased Lagrangian integral time. This is particularly useful in accessing the scale separation for such particles and to comparing it to the case of fluid particles in a similar configuration.
Previous studies on nonspherical particle-fluid interaction were mostly confined to elongated fiber-like particles, which were observed to induce turbulence drag reduction. However, with the presence of tiny disk-like particles how wall turbulence is modulated and whether drag reduction occurs are still unknown. Motivated by those open questions, we performed two-way coupled direct numerical simulations of inertialess spheroids in turbulent channel flow by an Eulerian-Lagrangian approach. The additional stress accounts for the feedback from inertialess spheroids on the fluid phase. The results demonstrate that both rigid elongated fibers (prolate spheroids) and thin disks (oblate spheroids) can lead to significant turbulence modulations and drag reduction. However, the disk-induced drag reduction is less pronounced than that of rigid fibers with the same volume fraction. Typical features of drag-reduced flows by additives are observed in both flow statistics and turbulence coherent structures. Moreover, in contrast to one-way simulations, the two-way coupled results of spheroidal particles exhibit stronger preferential alignments and lower rotation rates. At the end we propose a drag reduction mechanism by inertialess spheroids and explain the different performance for drag reduction by fibers and disks. We find that the spheroidal particles weaken the quasistreamwise vortices through negative work and, therefore, the Reynolds shear stress is reduced. However, the mean shear stress generated by particles, which is shape-dependent, partly compensates for the reduction of Reynolds shear stress and thus affects the efficiency of drag reduction. The present study implies that tiny disk-like particles can be an alternative drag reduction agent in wall turbulence.
Intermittency is a hallmark of turbulence, which exists not only in turbulent flows of classical viscous fluids but also in flows of quantum fluids such as superfluid $^4$He. Despite the established similarity between turbulence in classical fluids and quasi-classical turbulence in superfluid $^4$He, it has been predicted that intermittency in superfluid $^4$He is temperature dependent and enhanced for certain temperatures, which strikingly contrasts the nearly flow-independent intermittency in classical turbulence. Experimental verification of this theoretical prediction is challenging since it requires well-controlled generation of quantum turbulence in $^4$He and flow measurement tools with high spatial and temporal resolution. Here, we report an experimental study of quantum turbulence generated by towing a grid through a stationary sample of superfluid $^4$He. The decaying turbulent quantum flow is probed by combining a recently developed He$^*_2$ molecular tracer-line tagging velocimetry technique and a traditional second sound attenuation method. We observe quasi-classical decays of turbulent kinetic energy in the normal fluid and of vortex line density in the superfluid component. For several time instants during the decay, we calculate the transverse velocity structure functions. Their scaling exponents, deduced using the extended self-similarity hypothesis, display non-monotonic temperature-dependent intermittency enhancement, in excellent agreement with recent theoretical/numerical study of Biferale et al. [Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 024605 (2018)].