The rate of collision small cloud droplets in turbulent flows

Coalescence growth of droplets is a fundamental process for liquid cloud evolution. The initiation of collisions and coalescence occurs when a few droplets become large enough to fall. Gravitational collisions represent the most efficient mechanism for multi-disperse solutions, when droplets span a large variety of sizes. However, turbulence provides another mechanism for droplets coalescence, taking place also in the case of uniform condensational growth leading to narrow droplet-size spectra.

Heavy particle clustering in turbulent flows

Distributions of heavy particles suspended in incompressible turbulent flows are investigated by means of high-resolution direct numerical simulations. It is shown that particles form fractal clusters in the dissipative range, with properties independent of the Reynolds number. Conversely, in the inertial range, the particle distribution is not scale-invariant. It is however shown that deviations from uniformity depends only on a rescaled contraction rate, and not on the local Stokes number given by dimensional analysis.

Acceleration statistics of inertial particles from high resolution DNS turbulence

We present results from recent direct numerical simulations of heavy particle transport in homogeneous, isotropic, fully developed turbulence, with grid resolution up to 5123 and R? ? 185. By following the trajectories of millions of particles with different Stokes numbers, St ? [0.16 : 3.5], we are able to characterize in full detail the statistics of particle acceleration. We focus on the probability density function of the normalised acceleration a/arms and on the behaviour of their rootmean-squared acceleration arms as a function of both St and R?.

Fundamental diagrams in traffic flow: the case of heterogeneous kinetic models

Experimental studies on vehicular traffic provide data on quantities like density, flux, and mean speed of the vehicles. However, the diagrams relating these variables (the fundamental and \emph{speed} diagrams) show some peculiarities not yet fully reproduced nor explained by mathematical models. In this paper, resting on the methods of kinetic theory, we introduce a new traffic model which takes into account the heterogeneous nature of the flow of vehicles along a road.