Abstract
Caustics in the dynamics of heavy particles in turbulence accelerate particle collisions. The rate at which these singularities form depends sensitively on the Stokes number , the nondimensional inertia parameter. Exact results for this sensitive dependence have been obtained using Gaussian statistical models for turbulent aerosols. However, direct numerical simulations of heavy particles in turbulence yield much larger caustic-formation rates than predicted by the Gaussian theory. To understand the possible mechanisms explaining this difference, we analyze a non-Gaussian statistical model for caustic formation in the limit of small . We show that at small , depends sensitively on the tails of the distribution of Lagrangian fluid-velocity gradients. This explains why different authors obtained different -dependencies of in numerical-simulation studies. The most likely gradient fluctuation that induces caustics at small , by contrast, is the same in the non-Gaussian and Gaussian models. Direct numerical simulation results for particles in turbulence show that the optimal fluctuation is similar, but not identical, to that obtained by the model calculations.
- Received 19 July 2023
- Accepted 3 January 2024
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.9.024302
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by Bibsam.
Published by the American Physical Society