Pair statistics of oblate spheroids settling in a turbulent flow

Abstract

We perform direct numerical simulations of sub-Kolmogorov, inertial spheroids settling under gravity in homogeneous, isotropic turbulence and find that small-scale clustering, measured via the correlation dimension, depends sensitively on their aspect ratios. In particular, such particles are shown to cluster more as their anisotropy increases. Further, the approach rate for pairs of spheroids are calculated and found to deviate significantly from the spherical-particle limit. Our study, spanning a range of Stokes numbers and aspect ratios, provides critical inputs for developing collision models to understand the dynamics of sedimenting, anisotropic particles in general and ice crystals in clouds in particular.

References in corpus (6)

• Heavy particle concentration in turbulence at dissipative and inertial scales
• Lagrangian dynamics and statistical geometric structure of turbulence
• Statistical models for the dynamics of heavy particles in turbulence
• Effect of particle inertia on the alignment of small ice crystals in turbulent clouds
• Hydrodynamic interactions and extreme particle clustering in turbulence
• Velocity and acceleration statistics of heavy spheroidal particles in turbulence