594 research outputs found
Time resolved tracking of a sound scatterer in a turbulent flow: non-stationary signal analysis and applications
It is known that ultrasound techniques yield non-intrusive measurements of
hydrodynamic flows. For example, the study of the echoes produced by a large
number of particle insonified by pulsed wavetrains has led to a now standard
velocimetry technique. In this paper, we propose to extend the method to the
continuous tracking of one single particle embedded in a complex flow. This
gives a Lagrangian measurement of the fluid motion, which is of importance in
mixing and turbulence studies. The method relies on the ability to resolve in
time the Doppler shift of the sound scattered by the continuously insonfied
particle.
For this signal processing problem two classes of approaches are used:
time-frequency analysis and parametric high resolution methods. In the first
class we consider the spectrogram and reassigned spectrogram, and we apply it
to detect the motion of a small bead settling in a fluid at rest. In more
non-stationary turbulent flows where methods in the second class are more
robust, we have adapted an Approximated Maximum Likelihood technique coupled
with a generalized Kalman filter.Comment: 16 pages 9 figure
Intermittency and non-Gaussian fluctuations of the global energy transfer in fully developed turbulence
We address the experimentally observed non-Gaussian fluctuations for the
energy injected into a closed turbulent flow at fixed Reynolds number. We
propose that the power fluctuations mirror the internal kinetic energy
fluctuations. Using a stochastic cascade model, we construct the excess kinetic
energy as the sum over the energy transfers at different levels of the cascade.
We find an asymmetric distribution that strongly resembles the experimental
data. The asymmetry is an explicit consequence of intermittency and the global
measure is dominated by small scale events correlated over the entire system.
Our calculation is consistent with the statistical analogy recently made
between a confined turbulent flow and a critical system of finite size.Comment: To appear in Physical Review Letter
Inhomogeneous turbulence in the vicinity of a large scale coherent vortex
We study the statistics of turbulent velocity fluctuations in the
neighbourhood of a strong large scale vortex at very large Reynolds number. At
each distance from the vortex core, we observe that the velocity spectrum has a
power law ``inertial range'' of scales and that intermittency -- defined as the
variation of the probability density function (PDF) of velocity increments as
the length of the increment is varied -- is also present. We show that the
spectrum scaling exponents and intermittency characteristics vary with the
distance to the vortex. They are also influenced by the large scale dynamics of
the vortex.Comment: submitted to europhys lett, 6 pages, 5 figure
Lagrangian temperature, velocity and local heat flux measurement in Rayleigh-Benard convection
We have developed a small, neutrally buoyant, wireless temperature sensor.
Using a camera for optical tracking, we obtain simultaneous measurements of
position and temperature of the sensor as it is carried along by the flow in
Rayleigh-B\'enard convection, at . We report on statistics of
temperature, velocity, and heat transport in turbulent thermal convection. The
motion of the sensor particle exhibits dynamics close to that of Lagrangian
tracers in hydrodynamic turbulence. We also quantify heat transport in plumes,
revealing self-similarity and extreme variations from plume to plume.Comment: 4 page
Numerical study of dynamo action at low magnetic Prandtl numbers
We present a three--pronged numerical approach to the dynamo problem at low
magnetic Prandtl numbers . The difficulty of resolving a large range of
scales is circumvented by combining Direct Numerical Simulations, a
Lagrangian-averaged model, and Large-Eddy Simulations (LES). The flow is
generated by the Taylor-Green forcing; it combines a well defined structure at
large scales and turbulent fluctuations at small scales. Our main findings are:
(i) dynamos are observed from down to ; (ii) the critical
magnetic Reynolds number increases sharply with as turbulence sets
in and then saturates; (iii) in the linear growth phase, the most unstable
magnetic modes move to small scales as is decreased and a Kazantsev
spectrum develops; then the dynamo grows at large scales and modifies
the turbulent velocity fluctuations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Experimental test of the Gallavotti-Cohen fluctuation theorem in turbulent flows
We test the fluctuation theorem from measurements in turbulent flows. We
study the time fluctuations of the force acting on an obstacle, and we consider
two experimental situations: the case of a von K\'arm\'an swirling flow between
counter-rotating disks (VK) and the case of a wind tunnel jet. We first study
the symmetries implied by the Gallavotti-Cohen fluctuation theorem (FT) on the
probability density distributions of the force fluctuations; we then test the
Sinai scaling. We observe that in both experiments the symmetries implied by
the FT are well verified, whereas the Sinai scaling is established, as
expected, only for long times
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