A subgrid model for clustering of high-inertia particles in large-eddy simulations of turbulence

Clustering (or preferential concentration) of inertial particles suspended in a homogeneous, isotropic turbulent flow is strongly influenced by the smallest scales of the turbulence. In particle-laden large-eddy simulations (LES) of turbulence, these small scales are not captured by the grid and hence their effect on particle motion needs to be modelled. In this paper, we use a subgrid model based on kinematic simulations of turbulence (Kinematic Simulation based SubGrid Model or KSSGM), for the first time in the context of predicting the clustering and the relative velocity statistics of inertial particles. This initial study focuses on the special case of inertial particles in the absence of gravitational settling. We show that the KSSGM gives excellent predictions for clustering in a priori tests for inertial particles with St ≥ 2.0, where St is the Stokes number, defined as the ratio of the particle response time to the Kolmogorov time-scale. To the best of our knowledge, the KSSGM represents the first model that has been shown to capture the effect of the subgrid scales on inertial particle clustering for St ≥ 2.0. We also show that the mean inward radial relative velocity between inertial particles (?w_r?^(?), which enters into the formula for the collision kernel) is accurately predicted by the KSSGM for all St. We explain why the model captures clustering at higher St?but not for lower St?, and provide new insights into the key statistical parameters of turbulence that a subgrid model would have to describe, in order to accurately predict clustering of low-St?particles in an LES.     

Particle aggregation versus cluster aggregation in high dimensions

We distinguish two different types of irreversible aggregation-accretion of individual particles and successive aggregation of clusters of comparable size. In aggregation of particles which follow trajectories of fractal dimensionD ₁, we show that physical limits on the aggregation rate impose a lower bound on the fractal dimensionD ₀ of the aggregate. Ind-dimensional space,D ₀{d–D}₁ + 1. Thus aggregation of ballistic particles, withD ₁ = 1, is not fractal. By contrast, cluster aggregates appear to attain a finite, limitingD ₀ in high dimensions. We present a soluble model with this property, and argue that it should agree with Sutherland's binary aggregation model in high dimensions. For this model,D ₀ depends continuously on a parameter; the exponent is not universal.     

Production ofψ particles in N-N collisions and largeP T phenomenon

We calculate the yield ofψ (3105) particles in N-N collisions in a model which associates the production of heavy particles with largeP _T phenomenon. Our results show thatψ (3105) has a fairly strong coupling to other hadrons. We propose a criterion in the search for charmed particles and a parametrization for the expected yields of such particles.     

A reaction-diffusion model for moderately interacting particles

We consider a nonlinear reaction-diffusion model:n Brownian particles move independently inR ^d and eventually die. The interaction, of binary type, affects only the death rate. The radius of interaction goes to zero as the number of particles increases and we characterize a wide range of speeds at which the radius goes to zero. Within this range we show a law of large numbers for the empirical distributions of the alive particles. The limit is independent of the choice of the speed and it is characterized as the solution of a nonlinear reaction-diffusion equation.     

Harmonically trapped jellium

We discuss the model of a D-dimensional confined electron gas in which the particles are trapped by a harmonic potential. In particular, we study the non-interacting kinetic and exchange energies of finite-size inhomogeneous systems, and compare the resulting Thomas–Fermi and Dirac coefficients with various uniform electron gas paradigms. We show that, in the thermodynamic limit, the properties of this model are identical to those of the D-dimensional Fermi gas.     

Kinetic Limit for a System of Coagulating Planar Brownian Particles

We study a model of mass-bearing coagulating planar Brownian particles. The coagulation occurs when two particles are within a distance of order ε. We assume that the initial number of particles N is of order |logε|. Under suitable assumptions of the initial distribution of particles and the microscopic coagulation propensities, we show that the macroscopic particle densities satisfy a Smoluchowski-type equation.     

Mass spectrum of elementary particles in a temperature-dependent model

We show that the temperature-generalization of a popular model of quark-confinement seems to provide a rather interesting insight into the origin of mass of elementary particles: as the universe cooled, there was an era when particles did not have an identity since their masses were variable; the temperature at which the conversion of these ‘nomadic’ particles into ‘elementary’ particles took place seems to have been governed by the value of a dimension-less coupling constantC _c. ForC _c=0.001(0.1) this temperature is of the order of 10⁹ K (10¹¹ K), below which the particle masses do not change.     

Neutrino masses in supersymmetry: R-parity and leptogenesis

In the supersymmetric standard model of particle interactions, R-parity nonconservation is often invoked to obtain nonzero neutrino masses. We point out here that such interactions of the supersymmetric particles would erase any pre-existing lepton or baryon asymmetry of the universe before the electroweak phase transition through the B+L violating sphaleron processes. We also point out that all models of radiative generation of neutrino masses suffer from the same problem. We then show how neutrino masses may be obtained in supersymmetry (assuming R-parity conservation) together with successful leptogenesis and predict the possible existence of new observable particles.     

A Note on the Abelian Sandpile in $\pmb{\mathbb{Z}}^{d}$

We analyze the abelian sandpile model on ℤ ^d for the starting configuration of n particles in the origin and 2d−2 particles otherwise. We give a new short proof of the theorem of Fey, Levine and Peres (J. Stat. Phys. 198:143–159, 2010) that the radius of the toppled cluster of this configuration is O(n ^1/d ).     

Coupled temperature dependences of volume and compressibility

We present a new method for understanding the changes with temperature of the volume and compressibility of solids. These changes depend on five parameters: V ₀, B ₀, Θ, γ _G and δ _T. V ₀ and B ₀ are the atomic volume and bulk modulus at T?=?0?K, Θ is the Debye temperature, γ _G is the Grüneisen parameter, and δ _T is the Anderson–Grüneisen parameter. Equations for the temperature-dependent volume, bulk modulus and thermal expansion are given, and examples of the use of these equations are provided, with particular emphasis on the light actinides. For the elements, we examine the relationship between experimental values of γ _G and δ _T, and find no clear correlation. In particular, Swenson's rule, which states that the bulk modulus does not change with temperature if the volume is held constant, is a poor approximation to the data. We reveal a new useful approximate relationship between dB/dP and γ _G. We find that the thermodynamic quantity q, which describes the variation in γ _G with volume, distributes around 2, not around 1, as often assumed. We show that the thermal- expansion behavior of Si and Ge (including negative thermal expansion at low temperatures) are well described with the use of a two-level invar model.     

Thermodynamics and transport in an active Morse ring chain

We investigate the stochastic dynamics of an one-dimensional ring with N self-driven Brownian particles. In this model neighboring particles interact via conservative Morse potentials. The influence of the surrounding heat bath is modeled by Langevin-forces (white noise) and a constant viscous friction coefficient γ. The Brownian particles are provided with internal energy depots which may lead to active motions of the particles. The depots are realized by an additional nonlinearly velocity-dependent friction coefficient γ ₁(v) in the equations of motions. In the first part of the paper we study the partition functions of time averages and thermodynamical quantities (e.g. pressure) characterizing the stationary physical system. Numerically calculated non-equilibrium phase diagrams are represented. The last part is dedicated to transport phenomena by including a homogeneous external force field that breaks the symmetry of the model. Here we find enhanced mobility of the particles at low temperatures. Received 21 July 2001     

Equilibrium Fluctuations for a Model of Coagulating-Fragmenting Planar Brownian Particles

We study a model of mass-bearing coagulating-fragmenting planar Brownian particles. Coagulation occurs when two particles are within a distance of order ε. Our model is macroscopically described by an inhomogeneous Smoluchowski’s equation in the low ε limit provided that the initial number of particles N is of order |log ε|. When a detailed balance condition is satisfied, we establish a central limit theorem by showing that in the low ε limit, the particle density fluctuation fields obey an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck stochastic differential equation.     

Twice Scattered Particles in a Plane Are Uniformly Distributed

It was recently shown (Physica A 216:299–315, 1995) that in two dimensions the sum of three vectors each of whose lengths is exponentially distributed, whose direction is uniformly distributed and such that the sum of their lengths is l, is uniformly distributed on a disk of radius l. We state here this random walk result in terms of scattering of particles as follows: in two dimensions twice isotropically scattered particles by random (i.e., Poisson distributed) scatterers are uniformly distributed. We show that there is no other dimension d and no other number of scatterings s for which the corresponding result (i.e., uniform distribution on a d-dimensional sphere after s scatterings) holds.     

Phase Transition in a Generalized Eden Growth Model on a Tree

We study analytically the late time statistics of the number of particles in an Eden growth model on a tree. In this model, a cluster grows in continuous time on a binary Cayley tree, starting from the root, by absorbing new particles at the empty perimeter sites at a rate proportional to c ^−l where c is a positive parameter and l is the distance of the perimeter site from the root. For c=1, this model corresponds to random binary search trees and for c=2 it corresponds to digital search trees in computer science. By introducing a backward Fokker-Planck approach, we calculate the mean and the variance of the number of particles at large times and show that the variance undergoes a ‘phase transition’ at a critical value . While for the variance is proportional to the mean and the distribution is normal, for the variance is anomalously large and the distribution is non-Gaussian due to the appearance of extreme fluctuations. The model is generalized to one where growth occurs on a tree with m branches and, in this more general case, we show that the critical point occurs at .     

Variable reactivity and phase separation in patchy particle systems

ABSTRACT

Using statistical model, we study mechanisms of phase separation in a solution consisting of patchy particles, which are capable to form directed and saturated thermoreversible bonds. We focus on the impact of variable reactivity of patchy particles on the form of miscibility gap. We show that the variation of model parameters determining features of interparticle interaction makes it possible to obtain miscibility gaps of different types within the unified formalism. In particular, we uncover two different mechanisms of the formation of phase separation curves with lower critical solution temperature. The first mechanism is realised in the case of positive bonding energy; the second one can takes place when the energy of formation of two-bonded particles is lower than that for all other m-bonded ones. We conclude that the most interesting and non-trivial phase behavior is observed in the case of patchy particles with variable reactivity. Using rigorous statistical model, we uncover new mechanisms of phase separation in a solution consisting of patchy particles, which are capable to form directed and saturated thermoreversible bonds. This topic corresponds to state of the art in modern chemical physics. The results obtained shed light on interplay between features of non-isotropic interactions and phase behavior in both molecular and nanoparticle systems. We conclude that the most interesting and non-trivial phase behavior is observed in the case of patchy particles with variable reactivity.     

Deterministic Motion of the Controversial Piston in the Thermodynamic Limit

We consider the evolution of a system composed of N non-interacting point particles of mass m in a cylindrical container divided into two regions by a movable adiabatic wall (the adiabatic piston). We study the thermodynamic limit for the piston where the area A of the cross-section, the mass M of the piston, and the number N of particles go to infinity keeping A/M and N/M fixed. The length of the container is a fixed parameter which can be either finite or infinite. In this thermodynamic limit we show that the motion of the piston is deterministic and the evolution is adiabatic. Moreover if the length of the container is infinite, we show that the piston evolves toward a stationary state with velocity approximately proportional to the pressure difference. If the length of the container is finite, introducing a simplifying assumption we show that the system evolves with either weak or strong damping toward a well-defined state of mechanical equilibrium where the pressures are the same, but the temperatures different. Numerical simulations are presented to illustrate possible evolutions and to check the validity of the assumption.     

Conductivity of a generalized hopping system with internal dynamics

We derive explicit exact expressions for the frequency dependent conductivity of a system whose dynamics is described by a Master Equation in which the transition rates _ab can be functions of other dynamical variables. We apply this method to study the hopping of particles in a lattice with the hopping rate modulated by an additional harmonic variable. The results of this model are related to the observed microwave conductivity of superionic conductors. In particular we show that the modulation of the hopping rate can produce a structure similar to the one observed in AgI type systems.     

A Topological Glass

We propose and study a model with glassy behavior. The state space of the model is given by all triangulations of a sphere with n nodes, half of which are red and half are blue. Red nodes want to have 5 neighbors while blue ones want 7. Energies of nodes with other numbers of neighbors are supposed to be positive. The dynamics is that of flipping the diagonal of two adjacent triangles, with a temperature dependent probability. We show that this system has an approach to a steady state which is exponentially slow, and show that the stationary state is unordered. We also study the local energy landscape and show that it has the hierarchical structure known from spin glasses. Finally, we show that the evolution can be described as that of a rarefied gas with spontaneous generation of particles and annihilating collisions.     

Effective magnetic permeability of a turbulent fluid with macroferroparticles

A fully developed turbulent flow is capable to mix and homogenize a suspension of heavy macroscopic particles even at a high concentration of particles. If the particles are ferromagnetic, a kind of “turbulent ferrofluid" can be obtained. In the present work, we present a direct measurements of the effective magnetic permeability in a turbulent fluid with suspended ferromagnetic particles of typical size 0.01-0.1 mm and volume fraction c up to 25%. We show that the effective permeability can be fitted by the linear law = 1 + 5.3c for c? 10%. For higher volume fractions the permeability exceeds this linear relation. Received 11 January 2002