Kolmogorov scaling in bubble-induced turbulence

TL;DR

This paper investigates the applicability of Kolmogorov scaling in bubble-induced turbulence using 3D Lagrangian tracking, deriving a new energy dissipation scaling law and analyzing the limitations of inertial range development.

Contribution

It introduces a new scaling law for kinetic energy dissipation in bubble-induced turbulence and explores the scale separation constraints based on bubble parameters.

Findings

Kolmogorov scaling approximately holds in homogeneous bubble swarms.

A new energy dissipation rate scaling law is validated against experimental data.

Large inertial ranges are unlikely due to bubble size constraints.

Abstract

Experiments using 3D Lagrangian tracking are used to investigate Kolmogorov scaling below the bubble size in bubble-induced turbulence (BIT). Second and third order structure functions reveal approximate Kolmogorov scaling for homogeneous bubble swarms. A new scaling for the kinetic energy dissipation rate is derived and shown to be in excellent agreement with the data. Using this we predict the scale separation below the bubble size as a function of the parameters and find that a large inertial range is not possible in BIT since bubbles of the required size would quickly break down.