Experimental investigation on particle clustering in turbulent channel flow

In turbulent particle-laden flows, particles tend to concentrate in the low vorticity and high strain regions, resulting in the preferential concentration. A large number of numerical studies on inertial particle clustering in homogeneous isotropic turbulence (HIT) are reported in the literature. However, experimental investigations are scarce. The objective of the present project is to experimentally investigate and characterize particle clustering in turbulent channel flows for a wide range of Reynolds and Stokes numbers. The particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique will be used to correlate the particle clustering and turbulent background field. Such a study finds applications in ESP, cloud seeding, etc.