Kolmogorov scaling in bubble-induced turbulence

Abstract

Experiments using 3D Lagrangian tracking are used to investigate Kolmogorov scaling below the bubble size in bubble-induced turbulence (BIT). Second and third order structure functions reveal approximate Kolmogorov scaling for homogeneous bubble swarms. A new scaling for the kinetic energy dissipation rate is derived and shown to be in excellent agreement with the data. Using this we predict the scale separation below the bubble size as a function of the parameters and find that a large inertial range is not possible in BIT since bubbles of the required size would quickly break down.