An Experimental Study of Lagrangian Statistics in Rayleigh-B\'enard Convection

ORAL

Abstract

We present an experimental study of Lagrangian statistics in Rayleigh-B\'enard convection, using water as the working fluid. The tracking volume is (5 cm)$^{3}$ in the centre of a cylindrical shaped convection cell of aspect ratio one and 20 cm in height. Three cameras were used to identify the 3-dimensional positions of the tracer particles, which were evenly suspended in the cell. Detailed properties of the particle velocity, acceleration and dispersions along different directions have been investigated. We also studied the dependency of pair dispersion properties on the initial pair separation. All these properties have been examined with Rayleigh number spanning from $10^8$ to $10^{10}$ and Prandtl number around 6.2.

*Work supported by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong SAR (Project Nos. CUHK 403806).

Authors

  • Rui Ni

    • The Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • Shi-Di Huang

    • The Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • Sheng-Qi Zhou

    • The Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • Ke-Qing Xia

    • The Chinese University of Hong Kong
    • The Chinese Univesity of Hong Kong