A. CARTELLIER, M. BOURGOIN in collaboration with A. ALISEDA, Univ. of Washington
One of the most striking property of turbulent transport of inertial particles (denser than the fluid such as water droplets in air) is the tendency of the inclusions to segregate and to form clusters. The specific mechanism remains to be elucidated although it is widely admitted that the coupling between the inertial dynamics of the particles and the multiscale structures plays a major role. In the EDT team we perform experimental studies of preferential concentration of water droplets in grid turbulence excited either by a passive or an active grid. In particular we developed an original method of analysis of the particle concentration field by a Voronoi tessellation method (PoF 2010, IJMF 2012, PRE 2012)