22 research outputs found
Decorrelating a compressible turbulent flow: an experiment
Floating particles that are initially distributed uniformly on the surface of
a turbulent fluid, subsequently coagulate, until finally a steady state is
reached. This being so, they manifestly form a compressible system. In this
experiment, the information dimension D_1, and the Lyapunov exponents of the
coagulated floaters, are measured. The trajectories and the velocity fields of
the particles are captured in a sequence of rapidly acquired images. Then the
velocity sequence is randomly shuffled in time to generate new trajectories.
This analysis mimics the Kraichnan ensemble and yields properties of a velocity
correlation function that is delta-correlated in time (but not in space). The
measurements are compared with theoretical expectations and with simulations of
Boffetta et al., that closely mimic the laboratory experiment reported here.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
Introduction: Second Annual Gallery of Nonlinear Images (Los Angeles, California, 2005)
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/87886/2/041101_1.pd
Novel Optical Technique Developed and Tested for Measuring Two-Point Velocity Correlations in Turbulent Flows
A novel technique for characterizing turbulent flows was developed and tested at the NASA Glenn Research Center. The work is being done in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh, through a grant from the NASA Microgravity Fluid Physics Program. The technique we are using, Homodyne Correlation Spectroscopy (HCS), is a laser-light-scattering technique that measures the Doppler frequency shift of light scattered from microscopic particles in the fluid flow. Whereas Laser Doppler Velocimetry gives a local (single-point) measurement of the fluid velocity, the HCS technique measures correlations between fluid velocities at two separate points in the flow at the same instant of time. Velocity correlations in the flow field are of fundamental interest to turbulence researchers and are of practical importance in many engineering applications, such as aeronautics
Fluctuation and Dissipation in Liquid Crystal Electroconvection
In this experiment a steady state current is maintained through a liquid
crystal thin film. When the applied voltage is increased through a threshold, a
phase transition is observed into a convective state characterized by the
chaotic motion of rolls. Above the threshold, an increase in power consumption
is observed that is manifested by an increase in the mean conductivity. A sharp
increase in the ratio of the power fluctuations to the mean power dissipated is
observed above the transition. This ratio is compared to the predictions of the
fluctuation theorem of Gallavotti and Cohen using an effective temperature
associated with the rolls' chaotic motion.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, revtex forma
Persistent global power fluctuations near a dynamic transition in electroconvection
This is a study of the global fluctuations in power dissipation and light
transmission through a liquid crystal just above the onset of
electroconvection.
The source of the fluctuations is found to be the creation and annihilation
of defects. They are spatially uncorrelated and yet temporally correlated. The
temporal correlation is seen to persist for extremely long times. There seems
to be an especially close relation between defect creation/annihilat ion in
electroconvection and thermal plumes in Rayleigh-B\'enard convection