Particle behavior in homogeneous isotropic turbulence

Abstract.

Direct numerical simulations were conducted to investigate the behavior of heavy particles in homogeneous isotropic turbulence. The present study focused on the effect of particle inertia and drift on the autocorrelations of the particle velocity and the fluid seen by particles and the dispersion characteristics of particles. The Lagrangian integral time scale of particles monotonically increased as the magnitude of the particle response time increased, while that of the fluid seen by particles remained relatively constant; it reached a maximum when the particle response time was close to the Kolmolgorov time scale of the flow. Particle dispersion increased as the particle inertia increased for small particles, while for larger particles, it decreased as particle inertia increased; particle eddy diffusion coefficient was maximal, and greater than that of the fluid by about 30%, at the preferential concentration. The concentration field of the particles with τ _p /τ _k ≈1.0 showed that particles tend to collect in regions of low vorticity (high strain) due to preferential concentration. As the drift velocity of a particle is increased it crosses the paths of fluid elements more rapidly and will tend to lose correlation with its previous velocity faster than a fluid element will. And the correlation of particle velocities along the drift direction is more persistent than that perpendicular to the direction of drift. Simulations also showed that the continuity effect and the crossing-trajectory effect are weakened for particles with infinite inertia.