Tracer particle momentum effects in vortex flows

What is it about?

In this paper, an approximate solution is presented for the trajectory of solid particles in a vortex flow, similar to those used in optical velocity measurement techniques. The results show that the particle tracking error (or the difference between the particle speed and the fluid speed) is very different in different directions, and that the techniques currently used to size particles may yield larger or smaller errors than expected.

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Why is it important?

These results show that you can use larger tracer particles in strong vortex flows (making the optical measurement easier). It also provides a few robust techniques to check whether your particle error is a problem.