Stochastic suspensions of heavy particles

Turbulent suspensions of heavy particles in incompressible flows have gained much attention in recent years. A large amount of work focused on the impact that the inertia and the dissipative dynamics of the particles have on their dynamic and statistical properties. Substantial progress followed from the study of suspensions in model flows which, although much simpler, reproduce most of the important mechanisms observed in real turbulence. This paper presents recent developments made on the relative motion of a pair of particles suspended in time-uncorrelated and spatially self-similar Gaussian flows. This review is complemented by new results. By introducing a time-dependent Stokes number, it is demonstrated that inertial particle relative dispersion recovers asymptotically Richardson’s diffusion associated to simple tracers. A perturbative (homogeneization) technique is used in the small-Stokes-number asymptotics and leads to interpreting first-order corrections to tracer dynamics in terms of an effective drift. This expansion implies that the correlation dimension deficit behaves linearly as a function of the Stokes number. The validity and the accuracy of this prediction is confirmed by numerical simulations.