Turbulence in dilute polymer solutions -: art. no. 031707

The work reported below is a comparative study of the properties of turbulence with weak mean flow in a Newtonian fluid and in a dilute polymer solution with an emphasis on the small scale phenomena. The main tool used is a three-dimensional particle tracking system allowing to measure and follow in a Lagrangian manner the field of velocities, as well as velocity derivatives, and thus vorticity, strain, and a variety of related and dynamically significant quantities. The comparison of data from the two flows allows to directly observe the influence of polymers on these quantities as well as the evolution of material elements in the presence of polymers. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics.