151 research outputs found
Acceleration of heavy and light particles in turbulence: comparison between experiments and direct numerical simulations
We compare experimental data and numerical simulations for the dynamics of
inertial particles with finite density in turbulence. In the experiment,
bubbles and solid particles are optically tracked in a turbulent flow of water
using an Extended Laser Doppler Velocimetry technique. The probability density
functions (PDF) of particle accelerations and their auto-correlation in time
are computed. Numerical results are obtained from a direct numerical simulation
in which a suspension of passive pointwise particles is tracked, with the same
finite density and the same response time as in the experiment. We observe a
good agreement for both the variance of acceleration and the autocorrelation
timescale of the dynamics; small discrepancies on the shape of the acceleration
PDF are observed. We discuss the effects induced by the finite size of the
particles, not taken into account in the present numerical simulations.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure
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
Acceleration and vortex filaments in turbulence
We report recent results from a high resolution numerical study of fluid
particles transported by a fully developed turbulent flow. Single particle
trajectories were followed for a time range spanning more than three decades,
from less than a tenth of the Kolmogorov time-scale up to one large-eddy
turnover time. We present some results concerning acceleration statistics and
the statistics of trapping by vortex filaments.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
Lagrangian Velocity Statistics in Turbulent Flows: Effects of Dissipation
We use the multifractal formalism to describe the effects of dissipation on
Lagrangian velocity statistics in turbulent flows. We analyze high Reynolds
number experiments and direct numerical simulation (DNS) data. We show that
this approach reproduces the shape evolution of velocity increment probability
density functions (PDF) from Gaussian to stretched exponentials as the time lag
decreases from integral to dissipative time scales. A quantitative
understanding of the departure from scaling exhibited by the magnitude
cumulants, early in the inertial range, is obtained with a free parameter
function D(h) which plays the role of the singularity spectrum in the
asymptotic limit of infinite Reynolds number. We observe that numerical and
experimental data are accurately described by a unique quadratic D(h) spectrum
which is found to extend from to , as
the signature of the highly intermittent nature of Lagrangian velocity
fluctuations.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, to appear in PR
Magnetic field reversals in an experimental turbulent dynamo
We report the first experimental observation of reversals of a dynamo field
generated in a laboratory experiment based on a turbulent flow of liquid
sodium. The magnetic field randomly switches between two symmetric solutions B
and -B. We observe a hierarchy of time scales similar to the Earth's magnetic
field: the duration of the steady phases is widely distributed, but is always
much longer than the time needed to switch polarity. In addition to reversals
we report excursions. Both coincide with minima of the mechanical power driving
the flow. Small changes in the flow driving parameters also reveal a large
variety of dynamo regimes.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Measurement of Lagrangian velocity in fully developed turbulence
We have developed a new experimental technique to measure the Lagrangian
velocity of tracer particles in a turbulent flow, based on ultrasonic Doppler
tracking. This method yields a direct access to the velocity of a single
particule at a turbulent Reynolds number . Its dynamics is
analyzed with two decades of time resolution, below the Lagrangian correlation
time. We observe that the Lagrangian velocity spectrum has a Lorentzian form
, in agreement
with a Kolmogorov-like scaling in the inertial range. The probability density
function (PDF) of the velocity time increments displays a change of shape from
quasi-Gaussian a integral time scale to stretched exponential tails at the
smallest time increments. This intermittency, when measured from relative
scaling exponents of structure functions, is more pronounced than in the
Eulerian framework.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. to appear in PR
Transport of magnetic field by a turbulent flow of liquid sodium
We study the effect of a turbulent flow of liquid sodium generated in the von
K\'arm\'an geometry, on the localized field of a magnet placed close to the
frontier of the flow. We observe that the field can be transported by the flow
on distances larger than its integral length scale. In the most turbulent
configurations, the mean value of the field advected at large distance
vanishes. However, the rms value of the fluctuations increases linearly with
the magnetic Reynolds number. The advected field is strongly intermittent.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure
Generation of magnetic field by dynamo action in a turbulent flow of liquid sodium
We report the observation of dynamo action in the VKS experiment, i.e., the
generation of magnetic field by a strongly turbulent swirling flow of liquid
sodium. Both mean and fluctuating parts of the field are studied. The dynamo
threshold corresponds to a magnetic Reynolds number Rm \sim 30. A mean magnetic
field of order 40 G is observed 30% above threshold at the flow lateral
boundary. The rms fluctuations are larger than the corresponding mean value for
two of the components. The scaling of the mean square magnetic field is
compared to a prediction previously made for high Reynolds number flows.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Long time correlations in Lagrangian dynamics: a key to intermittency in turbulence
New aspects of turbulence are uncovered if one considers flow motion from the
perspective of a fluid particle (known as the Lagrangian approach) rather than
in terms of a velocity field (the Eulerian viewpoint). Using a new experimental
technique, based on the scattering of ultrasounds, we have obtained a direct
measurement of particle velocities, resolved at all scales, in a fully
turbulent flow. It enables us to approach intermittency in turbulence from a
dynamical point of view and to analyze the Lagrangian velocity fluctuations in
the framework of random walks. We find experimentally that the elementary steps
in the 'walk' have random uncorrelated directions but a magnitude that is
extremely long-range correlated in time. Theoretically, we study a Langevin
equation that incorporates these features and we show that the resulting
dynamics accounts for the observed one- and two-point statistical properties of
the Lagrangian velocity fluctuations. Our approach connects the intermittent
statistical nature of turbulence to the dynamics of the flow.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
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