Turbulent dispersion of droplets for air flow in a pipe

An optical technique was used to study the dispersion of 50 m, 90 m and 150 m droplets downstream of a source located in the center of a vertical pipe through which turbulent air is flowing. A turbulent dispersion coefficient, _P, and a mean-square of the fluctuations in the turbulent velocity, v_p², are determined from the change of the measured mean-square displacement of the droplets over the pipe cross section with time. The interesting aspect of the experiments is that they explored conditions where the inertia of the particles is believed to be a much more important effect than that of the crossing of trajectories associated with the inequality of the average velocities of the particles and the fluid.