Homogeneity and isotropy in a laboratory turbulent flow

We present a new design for a stirred tank that is forced by two parallel planar arrays of randomly actuated synthetic jets. This arrangement creates turbulence at high Reynolds number with low mean flow. Most importantly, it exhibits a region of 3D homogeneous isotropic turbulence that is significantly larger than the integral lengthscale. These features are essential for enabling laboratory measurements of turbulent suspensions. We use quantitative imaging to confirm isotropy at large, small, and intermediate scales by examining one-- and two--point statistics at the tank center. We then repeat these same measurements to confirm that the values measured at the tank center are constant over a large homogeneous region. In the direction normal to the symmetry plane, our measurements demonstrate that the homogeneous region extends for at least twice the integral length scale $L=9.5$ cm. In the directions parallel to the symmetry plane, the region is at least four times the integral lengthscale, and the extent in this direction is limited only by the size of the tank. Within the homogeneous isotropic region, we measure a turbulent kinetic energy of $6.07 \times 10^{-4}$m$^2$s$^{-2}$, a dissipation rate of $4.65 \times 10^{-5}$m$^2$s$^{-3}$, and a Taylor--scale Reynolds number of $R_\lambda=334$. The tank's large homogeneous region, combined with its high Reynolds number and its very low mean flow, provides the best approximation of homogeneous isotropic turbulence realized in a laboratory flow to date. These characteristics make the stirred tank an optimal facility for studying the fundamental dynamics of turbulence and turbulent suspensions.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure

Turbulence modulation and rotational dynamics of large nearly neutrally buoyant particles in homogeneous isotropic turbulence

This paper is an experimental investigation of turbulence modulation effects by Taylor-scale size particles in the dilute regime. Experiments are performed on a turbulence tank able to provide Homogeneous Isotropic Turbulence at Reλ ≈ 270. A novel experimental technique capable of simultaneously measuring rotational rates of arbitrarily shaped particles and fluid velocity using standard Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry (Stereo-PIV) and Index-of-Refracion matching is presented here. Particles of the same IoR of water with embedded tracers allowed the measurement of the velocity of the portion of particles in the measurement plane. A novel algorithm based on the assumption of solid body rotation, is then used to extract particle rotation rates. We compare the results from two particle shapes to the single phase measurements: spherical and ellipsoidal particles with aspect ratio 2. It is found that spherical particles provide a 15% turbulence reduction, about five times more than what is provided by ellipsoidal particles at the same volume fraction (φv ≈ 0.1%), and with less particle surface area available. These result suggest that there might be an turbulence production mechanism for ellipsoidal particles that is not present for spheres. This hypothesis is supported by spectral analysis. Pivoting effect is observed for both spherical and ellipsoidal particles, but for the latter, the reduction in the small wavenumber region is less evident. Preliminary results of statistics of rotational rates shows that ellipsoidal particles tend to have an enhanced rotational velocity as compared to spheres.QC 20110610</p

Turbulence modulation by large ellipsoidal particles: Concentration effects

We use laboratory measurements to study how suspended ellipsoidal particles affect the velocity statistics of a turbulent flow. The ellipsoids have size, time, and velocity scales corresponding to the inertial subrange of the turbulence and are nearly neutrally buoyant. These characteristics make them likely candidates for two-way interactions with the fluid (i.e.; they influence the flow and are influenced by it). We vary the volume fraction of suspended ellipsoids and observe the effects on one- and two-point velocity statistics in the fluid phase. Measurements at two different heights indicate that particle buoyancy (0.5 % denser than the ambient fluid) significantly changes volume fraction. We see that particles' effect on turbulent kinetic energy is a non-monotonic function of the volume fraction. We also find that particles' presence causes a redistribution of velocity variance from large scales to small scales within the inertial subrange, i.e.; the slope of power spectra is flatter than in the single-phase case. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Wien

Corrections for one- and two-point statistics measured with coarse-resolution particle image velocimetry

A theoretical model to determine the effect of the size of the interrogation window in particle image velocimetry measurements of turbulent flows is presented. The error introduced by the window size in two-point velocity statistics, including velocity autocovariance and structure functions, is derived for flows that are homogeneous within a 2D plane or 3D volume. This error model is more general than those previously discussed in the literature and provides a more direct method of correcting biases in experimental data. Within this model framework, simple polynomial approximations are proposed to provide a quick estimation of the effect of the averaging on these statistics. The error model and its polynomial approximation are validated using statistics of homogeneous isotropic turbulence obtained in a physical experiment and in a direct numerical simulation. The results demonstrate that the present formulation is able to correctly estimate the turbulence statistics, even in the case of strong smoothing due to a large interrogation window. We discuss how to use these results to correct experimental data and to aid the comparison of numerical results with laboratory data. \uc2\ua9 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg