Investigating the magnitude and temporal localization of inertial particle mixing in turbulent channel flows

Abstract

Mixing of inertial point particles in a turbulent channel flow at Re{\tau} = 950 is investigated by means of direct numerical simulations. We consider inertial particles, at varying Stokes number, released from pairs of sources located at different positions inside the channel and analyze the rate at which particles come into close proximity to each other. To do so, we employ a Lagrangian framework, which is suitable for the analysis of trajectories and in general for the study of mixing and dispersion problems. By varying the release position of particles along the wall-normal direction we obtain a thorough description of mixing in an anisotropic turbulent flow. Moreover, we analyze the effects of particle inertia and show that these are not univocal but also depend on the position and alignment of the sources, owing in particular to the dependence of the flow timescales on the distance from the wall.