Particle collision statistics in turbulent flows with kinematic simulation

etc15 Tracking Number 241

Colliding droplets or particles in turbulent flows are important in applications ranging from rain formation in clouds to aerosol production in process engineering. To reduce the computational costs when simulating such flows, kinematic simulation (KS) is frequently applied as a cheap surrogate for direct numerical simulation (DNS) of the turbulent flow field. In this work, we provide for the first time a systematic validation of the particle collision statistics that result from KS. We show that while the particle collision frequencies for particles with different Stokes numbers are in good agreement with DNS reference data, a more detailed inspection of the flow field and particle concentration characteristics reveals significant differences between KS and DNS.