English

Kinematics of Clustering

Fluid Dynamics 2014-07-10 v1

Abstract

The dynamical system for inertial particles in fluid flow has both attracting and repelling regions, the interplay of which can localize particles. In laminar flow experiments we find that particles, initially moving throughout the fluid domain, can undergo an instability and cluster into subdomains of the fluid when the flow Reynolds number exceeds a critical value that depends on particle and fluid inertia. We derive an expression for the instability boundary and for a universal curve that describes the clustering rate for all particles.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1407.2331,
  title  = {Kinematics of Clustering},
  author = {Steven Wang and Robert L. Stewart and Guy Metcalfe and Jie Wu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1407.2331},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

13 pages, 6 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T04:59:02.837Z