Particle-Laden Flow

Abstract

PrefaceThe dispersion of particles in a flow is of central importance in various geophysical and environmental problems. The spreading of aerosols and soot in the air, the growth and dispersion of plankton blooms in seas and oceans, or the transport of sediment in rivers, estuaries and coastal regions are striking examples.These problems are characterized by strong nonlinear coupling between several dynamical mechanisms such as convective sweeping, rotation, buoyancy, bio-physical influences and interactions between particles and fluid. As a result, processes on widely different length and time scales are simultaneously of importance. These range from Kolmogorov scales at which the flow at particle-scales is central, to much larger-scale structures that can be appreciated best via satellite observations. The multiscale nature of this challenging field motivated this colloquium that was organized by the recently established Dutch Platform for Geophysical and Environmental Fluid-mechanics (PGEF). The meeting took place at the University of Twente (the Netherlands), June 21-23, 2006. In total 55 participants from 13 different countries and 4 different continents contributed to the colloquium. The six keynote speakers provided reviews and recent research findings of areas that were central to the theme of the colloquium. These keynote lectures constituted the framework for the rest of the program, which contained 33 contributed papers, several of which are collected in this book.Issues related to the large-scale environmental aspects of particle-laden flows were addressed by considering turbulence modulation arising in high density clay-laden flows, and by focussing on transport processes in the stratosphere and its relevance to climate and weather predictions. Fundamental aspects of transport of particles formed the topic of the second day of the colloquium. Insights from experimental and computational research were combined to understand the distortion of flow in the neighborhood of embedded particles. Aspects of Lagrangian statistics in turbulence were discussed at length, addressing the dispersion of embedded point particles. Bridging the environ-VI Preface mental and the fundamental aspects of particle-laden flows was the topic of the final day of the colloquium. The Lagrangian dispersion of particles in the context of their environmental setting was presented. The closing lecture provided a synopsis of transport processes in particle-laden flow in which possibilities of multi-resolution, multi-physics modeling and monitoring were discussed.The colloquium on particle-laden flow was organized under the auspices of EUROMECH, the European Mechanics Society, and the Universities of Technology of Delft, Eindhoven and Twente. It was supported financially by a number of institutions: ERCOFTAC (European Research Council On Flow, Turbulence and Combustion), COST Action P20 'LES-AID' (COoperation in the field of Science and Technology), the Netherlands foundation for fundamental research of matter (FOM), the Netherland...