How sedimenting droplets grow and stir the fluid

POSTER

Abstract

We study a suspension of droplets in the presence of gravitational settling by using Cahn-Hilliard-Navier-Stokes model. In the early stage of time evolution, droplets diffuse and merge into each other. During this stage, the typical size of a droplet $L$ grows as $t^{1/3}$. As the droplet-size becomes larger they sediment and grow faster: $L$ grows as $t^{2/3}$. The settling droplets stir the flow and produce pseudo-turbulence. The kinetic energy of the flow grows as $t^{5/3}$.

*Bottlenecks for Particle Growth in Turbulent Aerosols from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (Dnr. KAW 2014.0048) and Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at PDC.

Authors

  • Akshay Bhatnagar

    • NORDITA, Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
    • Nordita, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University, Roslagstullsbacken 23, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden

  • Bernhard Mehlig

    • Department of Physics, Gothenburg University, 41296 Gothenburg, Sweden

  • Dhrubaditya Mitra

    • Nordita, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University, Roslagstullsbacken 23, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden

  • Prasad Perlekar

    • TIFR Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Hyderabad