The significance of two-way coupling in two-dimensional, dusty turbulence

Abstract

The significance of small-scale forcing of particles on the carrier two-dimensional turbulent flow has been shown to influence the spectral scaling properties of the carrier fluid. We investigate possible consequences of such two-way coupling in a turbulent suspension of inertial particles through one- and two-point Eulerian and Lagrangian statistics. In particular, we find signatures of enhanced intermittency in the vorticity distributions. We characterize the changes in the small-scale geometry of the flow via the Okubo-Weiss parameter. Finally, we examine the scaling properties of the second-order vorticity structure functions and find a non-trivial form of scale-invariance at finite mass loading. Motivated by these observations, we propose an effective multiscale forcing framework in which particle feedback is modeled as a spatially localized small-scale forcing. This dual-scale forcing captures the emergence of modified spectral scaling and provides a minimal Eulerian description of particle-laden turbulence that reproduces key statistical signatures of the system.