Reconstructing the fluid flow by tracking of large particles

Abstract

All the methods which estimate the unperturbed fluid flow velocity relying on particle suspensions address the same question: How can the fluid velocity be computed measuring the particles trajectory and/or their velocities? The tracking of a few large density-mismatched particles is here used to efficiently and accurately reconstruct the background fluid flow. Approximating the particulate phase space and taking the limit of vanishing Stokes number St -> 0, we retrieve the background flow for three test cases: a shear flow near a wall, a rigid-body vortex, and a strained vortex. The major advantages and the potentials of this approach are discussed in the end, highlighting how to overcome the classic shortcomings of experimental measurements faced for near-boundaries particle tracking.