Spatial distribution and settling velocity of heavy particles in synthetic turbulent fields

We analyse numerically the motion of small inertial particles, subject to gravity, in two simple velocity fields: two-dimensional cellular flow, and a three-dimensional flow being the superposition of random Fourier velocity modes. The latter, also known as the kinematic simulation or synthetic turbulence, has often been applied in various studies, including those aiming to predict particle dispersion. The interplay of the particle inertia and the acceleration of gravity has non-trivial consequences for trajectories of particles and their spatial distribution, known as a preferential concentration. Also, we compute the average settling velocity of particles in function of their inertia and the number of fluid velocity modes used in simulations. The present paper aims to study these efects, as the synthetic turbulence represents an interesting option for subfilter modeling in particle-laden large-eddy simulation.