Oscillating grid generating turbulence near gas-liquid interfaces in shear-thinning dilute polymer solutions

Understanding the behavior of liquid phase turbulence near gas-liquid interfaces is of great interest in many fundamental, environmental, or industrial applications. For example, near-surface liquid side turbulence is known to enhance the mass transfers between the two phases. Descriptions of this behavior for air-water systems exist in the literature, but the case of turbulence in a shear-thinning liquid phase below a flat gas-liquid interface has never been considered to the best of our knowledge. This paper consists in an experimental characterization of low Reynolds number, oscillating grid generated, near-surface turbulence in shear-thinning dilute polymer solutions, in the surface-influenced and in the viscous sublayers. The energy transfer mechanism, known in the water case, is evidenced in dilute polymer solutions. A horizontal damping mechanism, similar to the one introduced by surfactants, is evidenced. The evolution of the viscous sublayer depth can be explained by both viscous and shear-thinning effects, and it appears that a critical polymer concentration may exist within the dilute regime

POD analysis of oscillating grid turbulence in water and shear thinning polymer solution

Oscillating grids are frequently used with water and Newtonian fluids to generate controlled turbulence and mixing. Yet, their use with shear thinning fluids still requires experimental characterization. Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) is applied to PIV measurements of the flow generated by an oscillating grid in water and a shear thinning dilute polymer solution (DPS) of xanthan gum. The aims are to investigate the ability of POD to isolate periodic flow structures, and to use it to describe the effects of the shear thinning property. A dominance of the low order POD modes is evidenced in DPS. The methods applied in blade stirred tanks to identify oscillatory motion fail here. However, a strong mode coupling in the grid swept region is observed, determined by the working fluid and by an underlying chaotic nature of the flow. Possibilities of reconstructing turbulence properties using high order modes are discussed

HYBRID LARGE EDDY SIMULATION/LAGRANGIAN STOCHASTIC MODEL FOR TURBULENT PASSIVE AND REACTIVE SCALAR DISPERSION IN A PLANE JET

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Modeling aeolian erosion in presence of vegetation

International audienceSemiarid landscapes are characterized by vegetated surfaces. Understanding the impact of vegetation on aeolian soil erosion is important for reducing soil erosion or limiting crop damage through abrasion or burial. In the present study, a saltation model fully coupled with a large-eddy simulation airflow model is extended to vegetated landscapes. From this model, the sensitivity of sand erosion to different arrangements and type of plants (shrub versus tree) representative of semiarid landscapes is investigated and the wind erosion reduction induced by plants is quantified. We show that saltation processes over vegetated surfaces have a limited impact on the mean wind statistics, the momentum extracted from the flow by saltating particles being negligible compared to that extracted by plants. Simulated sand erosion patterns resulting from plant distribution, i.e., accumulation and erosion areas, appear qualitatively consistent with previous observations. It is shown that sand erosion reduction depends not only on vegetation cover but also on plant morphology and plant distribution relative to the mean wind direction. A simple shear stress partitioning approach applied in shrub cases gives similar trends of sand erosion reduction as the present model following wind direction and vegetation cover. However, the magnitude of the reduction appears significantly different from one approach to another. Although shrubs trap saltating particles, trees appear more efficient than shrubs to reduce sand erosion. This is explained by the large-scale sheltering effect of trees compared to the local shrub one

Band-pass filtered velocity statistics in decaying turbulent box

AbstractFor homogeneous isotropic turbulence study, the acquisition of band-pass filtered velocity increments (FVI) in a non-forced turbulent box is still a challenge both experimentally and numerically. Turbulence and associated physical processes, at a given instant, are permanently contaminated by a forcing process which can seldom be universal. The situation tends to be the origin of intermittency and the non-Gaussian probability density distribution for acceleration and velocity gradients. To reveal implied mechanism, grid turbulence is adapted to observe non-perturbed homogeneous isotropic turbulence. The velocity increments (VI) can be obtained following Comte-Bellot and Corrsin (GCBC) by means of two point-two time shifted velocity measurements. It is difficult to obtain decaying turbulence (DT) at large turbulent Reynolds number without pollution coming from walls. Nevertheless it is also significant to investigate DT in low Reynolds number regimes to determine non-polluted tendencies. The similarity of DT between particle image velocimetry (PIV) and hot wire anemometry measurements by GCBC are presented. Here we focus our tendency on VI and FVI probability density function (PDF) shapes in this letter. In conclusion, the tendency to Gaussian shape in inertial zone wavenumbers, demonstrates that there will be no intermittency if turbulent cascade is not perturbed

Part I : a priori study of erosion and deposition with large eddy simulation of turbulent flow over multiple 2D sandy Gaussian hills

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PTV measurements of oscillating grid turbulence in water and polymer solutions

Particle Tracking Velocimetry (PTV) is applied to measure the flow in an oscillating grid stirred tank filled with either water or shear thinning dilute polymer solutions (DPS) of Xanthan Gum (XG). There are many interests of studying turbulence in such complex non-Newtonian fluids (e.g. in the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, or food industry), and grid stirred tanks are commonly used for fundamental studies of turbulence in Newtonian fluids. Yet the case of oscillating grid flows in shear thinning solutions has been addressed recently by Lacassagne et al. (Exp Fluids 61(1):15, Phys Fluids 31(8):083102, 2019a, b), with only a single two dimensional (2D) Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) characterization of mean flow and turbulence properties in the central vertical plane of the tank. Here, PTV data processed by the Shake The Box algorithm allows for the time resolved, three dimensional (3D) 3 components (3C) measurement of Lagrangian velocities for a large number of tracked particles in a central volume of interest of the tank. The possibility of projecting this Lagrangian information on an Eulerian grid is explored, and projected Eulerian results are compared with 2D PIV data from the previous work. Even if the mean flow is difficult to reproduce at the lowest polymer concentrations, a good agreement is found between measured turbulent decay laws, thus endorsing the use of this 3D-PTV metrology for the study of oscillating grid turbulence in DPS. The many possibilities of further analysis offered by the 3D3C nature of the data, either in the original Lagrangian form or in the projected Eulerian one, are finally discussed

Three-dimensional solid particle positions in a flow via multiangle off-axis digital holography

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