No abstract

We propose that the collision rates of non-spherical particles settling in a turbulent environment are significantly higher than those of spherical particles of the same mass and volume. The theoretical argument is based on the dependence of the particle drag force on the particle orientation, thus varying gravitational settling velocities, which can remain different until contact due to the particle inertia. Therefore, non-spherical particles can collide with large relative velocities. Direct numerical simulations (DNS) of streamwise decaying isotropic turbulence seeded with small, heavy, rotationally symmetric ellipsoids of five different aspect ratios are performed to confirm these arguments. The motion of 21 million ellipsoids is tracked by a Lagrangian particle solver assuming creeping flow conditions and neglecting the influence of the particles on the flow. We find that ellipsoids collide considerably more often than spherical particles of the same volume and mass due to a drastically increased mean relative velocity at contact.

Motivated by systems in which droplets grow and shrink in a turbulence-driven supersaturation field, we investigate the problem of turbulent condensation in a general manner. Using direct numerical simulations we show that the turbulent fluctuations of the supersaturation field offer different conditions for the growth of droplets which evolve in time due to turbulent transport and mixing. Based on that, we propose a Lagrangian stochastic model for condensation and evaporation of small droplets in turbulent flows. It consists of a set of stochastic integro-differential equations for the joint evolution of the squared radius and the supersaturation along the droplet trajectories. The model has two parameters fixed by the total amount of water and the thermodynamic properties, as well as the Lagrangian integral timescale of the turbulent supersaturation. The model reproduces very well the droplet size distributions obtained from direct numerical simulations and their time evolution. A noticeable result is that, after a stage where the squared radius simply diffuses, the system converges exponentially fast to a statistical steady state independent of the initial conditions. The main mechanism involved in this convergence is a loss of memory induced by a significant number of droplets undergoing a complete evaporation before growing again. The statistical steady state is characterised by an exponential tail in the droplet mass distribution. These results reconcile those of earlier numerical studies, once these various regimes are considered.Comment: 24 pages, 12 figure