Inertial particles in homogeneous shear turbulence

The characteristics of inertial particles distribution in a uniformly sheared turbulent flow are investigated, with the aim of quantifying the effects associated with the large-scale anisotropy induced by the mean velocity gradient. The focus of the analysis is on clustering aspects, and in particular on the dependence of the radial distribution function on both the directionality and the magnitude of the observation scale. We discuss experimental data measured in a homogeneous shear flow seeded with particles of size comparable with the Kolmogorov length scale and Stokes number St ≈ 0.3, and discuss their distribution properties in comparison with results provided by related one-way coupled direct numerical simulations which make use of the point-force approximation.