|
Rafael D. Vilela (1) and Adilson E. Motter (2)
(1) Max Planck Institut PKS, Dresden, Germany (2) Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA The advection dynamics of aerosols is relevant in a variety of physical contexts, including astrophysical, atmospheric and environmental research. Previous studies are consistent with the assumption that such heavy particles always escape in open chaotic advection. In this talk I will show that a different behavior is possible. We have analyzed the dynamics of aerosols both in the absence and presence of gravitational effects, and both when the dynamics of the fluid particles is hyperbolic and nonhyperbolic. Permanent trapping and clustering of aerosols much heavier than the advecting fluid is shown to occur in all these cases. In a rather counter-intuitive way, we observe that this phenomenon is determined by a process in which the aerosol particles are continuously scattered by vortices of the underlying flow. Main reference: R. D. Vilela and A. E. Motter, Can aerosols be trapped in open flows? Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 264101 (2007). |
|