Understanding The Dynamics Of Droplets And Turbulence

Turbulent flows laced with particles can be found everywhere, and include fuel droplets in combustion engines, airborne pollen, and water droplets in clouds. Even though they have been studied often, questions still remain that have to do with the particles’ inertia prohibiting them from following turbulence flow, making the Navier-Stokes equations insufficient for solving their equations. This white paper presents a project studying the dynamics of inertial droplets in a turbulent flow in a well-controlled environment. Measurements of droplet size distribution and turbulent dispersion rate in this study are done with interferometric particle imaging (IPI) and phosphorescent tagging techniques. Download the full paper to learn more about the experiment, its results, and an explanation on the dynamics of droplets and turbulence.