How gravity and size affect the acceleration statistics of bubbles in turbulence

Abstract

We report results from the first systematic Lagrangian experimental investigation in the regime of very light (air bubbles in water) and large particles (D/{\eta} >> 1) in turbulence. Using a traversing camera setup and particle tracking, we study the Lagrangian acceleration statistics of ~3 mm diameter (D) bubbles in a water tunnel with nearly homogeneous and isotropic turbulence generated by an active-grid. The Reynolds number (Re_{\lambda}) is varied from 145 to 230, resulting in size ratios, D/{\eta} in the range of 7.3--12.5, where {\eta} is the Kolmogorov length scale. The experiments reveal that gravity increases the acceleration variance and reduces the intermittency of the PDF in the vertical direction. Once the gravity offset is subtracted, the variances of both the horizontal and vertical acceleration components are about 5\pm2 times larger than the one measured in the same flow for fluid tracers. Moreover, for these light particles, the experimental acceleration PDF shows a substantial reduction in intermittency at growing size ratios, in contrast to neutrally buoyant or heavy particles. All these results are closely matched by numerical simulations of finite-size bubbles with the Fax\'en corrections.