Clustering of inertial particles in turbulent flows

Abstract

We consider inertial particles suspended in an incompressible turbulent flow. Due to inertia of particles, their velocity field acquires small compressible component. Its presence leads to a new qualitative effect --- possibility of clustering. We show that this effect is significant for heavy particles, leading to strong fluctuations of the concentration.

arXiv comment10 pages, revtex, updated version

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Particles and fields in fluid turbulence
• Dynamics and statistics of heavy particles in turbulent flows
• Stochastic processes in turbulent transport