Gaetano Sardina

Spatial development of particle-laden turbulent pipe flow

The inhomogeneity of turbulence in wall bounded flows induces the phenomenology called turbophoresis whereby inertial particles of suitable mass accumulate at the solid wall. Particles injected near the axis of a fully turbulent pipe flow, after an initial spreading phase, undergo a segregation process which eventually leads to a pseudoequilibrium distribution sufficiently downstream. Wall densities up to thousand times the reference value can be easily achieved. The process is discussed here by analyzing the direct numerical simulation (DNS) data of a spatially developing particle laden pipe flow under the assumption of dilute suspension. Development phase and asymptotic state are addressed in quantitative terms. A Shannon-like entropy is introduced to quantify the level of spreading/segregation achieved by the particle distributions along the pipe. This allows to define on a physically sound basis the length of the developing region and to summarize in a single indicator the accumulation level as a func...

The effect of the Basset history force on particle clustering in homogeneous and isotropic turbulence

We study the effect of the Basset history force on the dynamics of small particles transported in homogeneous and isotropic turbulence and show that this term, often neglected in previous numerical studies, reduces the small-scale clustering typical of inertial particles. The contribution of this force to the total particle acceleration is, on average, responsible for about 10% of the total acceleration and particularly relevant during rare strong events. At moderate density ratios, i.e., sand or metal powder in water, its presence alters the balance of forces determining the particle acceleration.

Dispersion of swimming algae in laminar and turbulent channel flows: consequences for photobioreactors

Shear flow significantly affects the transport of swimming algae in suspension. For example, viscous and gravitational torques bias bottom-heavy cells to swim towards regions of downwelling fluid (gyrotaxis). It is necessary to understand how such biases affect algal dispersion in natural and industrial flows, especially in view of growing interest in algal photobioreactors. Motivated by this, we here study the dispersion of gyrotactic algae in laminar and turbulent channel flows using direct numerical simulation (DNS) and a previously published analytical swimming dispersion theory. Time-resolved dispersion measures are evaluated as functions of the Péclet and Reynolds numbers in upwelling and downwelling flows. For laminar flows, DNS results are compared with theory using competing descriptions of biased swimming cells in shear flow. Excellent agreement is found for predictions that employ generalized Taylor dispersion. The results highlight peculiarities of gyrotactic swimmer dispersion relative to passive tracers. In laminar downwelling flow the cell distribution drifts in excess of the mean flow, increasing in magnitude with Péclet number. The cell effective axial diffusivity increases and decreases with Péclet number (for tracers it merely increases). In turbulent flows, gyrotactic effects are weaker, but discernable and manifested as non-zero drift. These results should have a significant impact on photobioreactor design.

Anomalous memory effects on transport of inertial particles in turbulent jets

The letter focuses on a new phenomenology found in the far field of turbulent-free jets, where small inertial particles exhibit a local concentration peak on the axis. This finding contrasts with the prediction of classical models based on turbulent kinetic energy gradient transport assumptions, whereby particles should move away from the local kinetic energy maxima. This behavior is universal, i.e., it occurs no matter the details of the specific jet, and takes place irrespective of the inertia of the particles. As anomalous signature of the near field dynamics, it cannot be predicted on purely dimensional grounds. A new form of similarity allows to collapse the local particle flux profile on a universal curve.

Continuous Growth of Droplet Size Variance due to Condensation in Turbulent Clouds.

We use a stochastic model and direct numerical simulation to study the impact of turbulence on cloud droplet growth by condensation. We show that the variance of the droplet size distribution increases in time as t^{1/2}, with growth rate proportional to the large-to-small turbulent scale separation and to the turbulence integral scales but independent of the mean turbulent dissipation. Direct numerical simulations confirm this result and produce realistically broad droplet size spectra over time intervals of 20 min, comparable with the time of rain formation.

Accumulation of motile elongated micro-organisms in turbulence

We study the effect of turbulence on marine life by performing numerical simulations of motile micro-organisms, modelled as prolate spheroids, in isotropic homogeneous turbulence. We show that the clustering and patchiness observed in laminar flows, linear shear and vortex flows, are significantly reduced in a three-dimensional turbulent flow mainly because of the complex topology; elongated micro-organisms show some level of clustering in the case of swimmers without any preferential alignment whereas spherical swimmers remain uniformly distributed. Micro-organisms with one preferential swimming direction (e.g. gyrotaxis) still show significant clustering if spherical in shape, whereas prolate swimmers remain more uniformly distributed. Due to their large sensitivity to the local shear, these elongated swimmers react more slowly to the action of vorticity and gravity and therefore do not have time to accumulate in a turbulent flow. These results show how purely hydrodynamic effects can alter the ecology of micro-organisms that can vary their shape and their preferential orientation.

Numerical simulations of aggregate breakup in bounded and unbounded turbulent flows

Breakup of small aggregates in fully developed turbulence is studied by means of direct numerical simulations in a series of typical bounded and unbounded flow configurations, such as a turbulent channel flow, a developing boundary layer and homogeneous isotropic turbulence. The simplest criterion for breakup is adopted, whereby aggregate breakup occurs when the local hydrodynamic stress sigma similar to epsilon(1/2), with epsilon being the energy dissipation at the position of the aggregate, overcomes a given threshold sigma(cr), which is characteristic for a given type of aggregate. Results show that the breakup rate decreases with increasing threshold. For small thresholds, it develops a scaling behaviour among the different flows. For high thresholds, the breakup rates show strong differences between the different flow configurations, highlighting the importance of non-universal mean-flow properties. To further assess the effects of flow inhomogeneity and turbulent fluctuations, the results are compared with those obtained in a smooth stochastic flow. Furthermore, we discuss the limitations and applicability of a set of independent proxies.

Dynamics of inertial particles in free jets

Turbulent mixing of small and diluted inertial particles presents many peculiar and unexpected features such as preferential segregation at small scales, i.e. clustering or, in wall flows, preferential wall accumulation, i.e. turbophoresis, which are induced by the multi-scale features of the turbulence in the carrier fluid. In the context of multi-phase flows, the effect of turbulence on particle distributions was commonly addressed in simplified geometries as in homogeneous or channel flows. The present paper discusses the dynamics of suspensions with different inertia in the far field of turbulent axisymmetric jets by means of direct numerical simulations. The jet is a well-known constant Reynolds number flow where the characteristic length scale grows linearly with distance from the jet origin, while the characteristic velocity decays in inverse proportion. These features, combined with the finite inertia, induce peculiar non-equilibrium effects on the spatial distribution of the particles. They range from spatially developing small-scale clustering, due to the multi-scale nature of the turbulent fluctuations, to self-similarity of the mean particle velocity profile, presumably collapsing on a one-parameter family of shapes parameterized in terms of the local large-scale Stokes number. The properties presented here are the most evident features of this most interesting system, where intermittency and spatial inhomogeneity interact to induce even subtler effects of spatial segregation, which certainly deserve further investigation.

DNS of a free turbulent jet laden with small inertial particles

Turbulent jets with a dispersed phase are widely found in technological applications or in natural flows. In Plinian volcano eruptions a multiphase jet-column is produced. In this process the mixing of the entrained fresh air into the hot stream of gas is crucial in establishing the conditions for pyroclastic flows (Kaminski et al., 2005).

Reduced particle settling speed in turbulence

We study the settling of finite-size rigid spheres in sustained homogeneous isotropic turbulence (1111) by direct numerical simulations using an immersed boundary method to account for the disperse ...