Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

IOP Publishing, New Journal of Physics, 7(10), p. 075014, 2008

DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/10/7/075014

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Collisions of particles advected in random flows

Journal article published in 2008 by K. Gustavsson, B. Mehlig ORCID, M. Wilkinson
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

We consider collisions of particles advected in a fluid. As already pointed out by Smoluchowski [Z. f. physik. Chemie XCII, 129-168, (1917)], macroscopic motion of the fluid can significantly enhance the frequency of collisions between the suspended particles. This effect was invoked by Saffman and Turner [J. Fluid Mech. 1, 16-30, (1956)] to estimate collision rates of small water droplets in turbulent rain clouds, the macroscopic motion being caused by turbulence. Here we show that the Saffman-Turner theory is unsatisfactory because it describes an initial transient only. The reason for this failure is that the local flow in the vicinity of a particle is treated as if it were a steady hyperbolic flow, whereas in reality it must fluctuate. We derive exact expressions for the steady-state collision rate for particles suspended in rapidly fluctuating random flows and compute how this steady state is approached. For incompressible flows, the Saffman-Turner expression is an upper bound. Comment: 24 pages, 3 figures