Preferential concentration of heavy particles in compressible isotropic turbulence

Numerical simulations of particle-laden compressible isotropic turbulence with Taylor Reynolds number Re_λ ~ 100 are conducted by using a high-order turbulence solver, which is based on high-order compact finite difference method in the whole flow domain and localized artificial diffusivities for discontinuities. For simplicity, only one-way coupling (i.e., the influence of fluid on particles) between the carrier flow and particles is considered. The focus is on the study of the preferential concentration of heavy particles in dissipative scale of turbulence and the underlying mechanisms. Firstly, the effect of Stokes number (St) on the particle distribution in flow of Mach 1.01 (referred to as high-Mach-number case in this study) is investigated as a necessary supplementation for the previous studies in incompressible and weakly compressible flows. It turns out that heavy particles with Stokes number close to unity exhibit the strongest preferential concentration, which is in agreement with the observation in incompressible flow. All types of heavy particles have a tendency to accumulate in high-density regions of the background flow. While all kinds of particles dominantly collect in low-vorticity regions, intermediate and large particles (St = 1 and St = 5) are also found to collect in high-vorticity regions behind the randomly formed shocklets. Secondly, the impact of turbulent Mach number (M_t) (or the compressibility) of the carrier flow on the spatial distribution of the particles with St = 1 is discussed using the simulated compressible flows with M_t being 0.22, 0.68, and 1.01, respectively. In low-Mach-number flow, particles tend to concentrate in regions of low vorticity due to the centrifuge effect of vortices and particle concentration decreases monotonically with the increasing vorticity magnitude. As Mach number increases, the degree of particle clustering is slightly weakened in low-vorticity regions but is enhanced in high-vorticity regions, which only account for a small fraction of the flow domain. This observation as well as the anomalous correlation between the fluid density and vorticity can be ascribed to the appearance of randomly distributed shocklets in high-Mach-number turbulence, which enhance the vorticity and density (pressure) immediately behind them. Finally, the effects of the forcing and cooling schemes on the properties of flow and particles are also discussed. Published by AIP Publishing.