Abstract
We investigate the distribution of relative velocities between small heavy particles of different sizes in turbulence by analyzing a statistical model for bidisperse turbulent suspensions, containing particles with two different Stokes numbers. This number, , is a measure of particle inertia which in turn depends on particle size. When the Stokes numbers are similar, the distribution exhibits power-law tails, just as in the case of equal . The power-law exponent is a nonanalytic function of the mean Stokes number , so that the exponent cannot be calculated in perturbation theory around the advective limit. When the Stokes-number difference is larger, the power law disappears, but the tails of the distribution still dominate the relative-velocity moments, if is large enough.
- Received 5 March 2017
- Revised 18 July 2017
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.96.061102
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.
Published by the American Physical Society