Statistics of particle concentration in free-surface turbulence

Abstract

Particles on the surface of an incompressible fluid maintained in a turbulent steady-state cluster into spatio-temporally complex flow structures. We experimentally study the statistics of particle concentration n(r, t) over various coarse-grained scales r' in the inertial range. Another control parameter is the Taylor Microscale Reynolds number Re{sub {lambda}}. The focus is on the steady state probability density function {Pi}(n{sub r}). Attention is also given to the variance {sigma}{sup 2}(r, t) of this PDF, since it yields information about the topology of the coagulated structures. Where possible, the results are compared and contrasted with those obtained in a recent analytical and numerical study of two-dimensional synthetic turbulence by Ducasse and Pumir. There, but not here, the dimensionless compressibility C is an important control parameter

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