Fragmentation in turbulence by small eddies
Abstract
From air-sea gas exchange, oil pollution, to bioreactors, the ubiquitous fragmentation of bubbles/drops in turbulence has been modeled by relying on the classical Kolmogorov-Hinze paradigm since the 1950s. This framework hypothesizes that bubbles/drops are broken solely by eddies of the same size, even though turbulence is well known for its wide spectrum of scales. Here, by designing an experiment that can physically and cleanly disentangle eddies of various sizes, we report the experimental evidence to challenge this hypothesis and show that bubbles are preferentially broken by the sub-bubble-scale eddies. Our work also highlights that fragmentation cannot be quantified solely by the stress criterion or the Weber number; The competition between different time scales is equally important. Instead of being elongated slowly and persistently by flows at their own scales, bubbles are fragmented in turbulence by small eddies via a burst of intense local deformation within a short time.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jan 25, 2022
- Source ID
- 10.1038/s41467-022-28092-3
Entities
People
- Ashwanth K. R. Salibindla
- Carl Urbanik
- Noah Corbitt
- Rui Ni
- Shiyong Tan
- Yinghe Qi
Organizations
- National Science Foundation
- Office of Naval Research