Optical studies on the turbulent motion of solid particles in a pipe flow

Abstract

An extension of an axial viewing optical technique (first used by Lee, Adrian & Hanratty) is described which allows the determination of the turbulence characteristics of solid particles being transported by water in a pipe. Measurements are presented of the mean radial velocity, the mean rate of change radial velocity, the mean-square of the radial and circumferential fluctuations, the Eulerian turbulent diffusion coefficient, and the Lagrangian turbulent diffusion coefficient. A particular focus is to explore the influence of slip velocity for particles which have small time constants. It is found that with increasing slip velocity the magnitude of the turbulent velocity fluctuations remains unchanged but that the turbulent diffusivity decreases. The measurements of the average rate of change of particle velocity are consistent with the notion that particles move from regions of high fluid turbulence to regions of low fluid turbulence. Measurements of the root-mean-square of the fluctuations of the rate of change of particle velocity allow an estimation of the average magnitude of the particle slip in a highly turbulent flow, which needs to be known to analyse the motion of particles not experiencing a Stokes drag.