Sling effect in collisions of water droplets in turbulent clouds

Gregory Falkovich (1) , Alain Pumir (2)

1 Physics of Complex systems
2 INLN - Institut Non Linéaire de Nice Sophia-Antipolis

We describe and evaluate the contribution of sling effect into the collision rate of the same-size water droplets in turbulent clouds. We show that already for Stokes numbers exceeding 0.2 the sling effect gives a contribution comparable to Saffman-Turner contribution, which may explain why the latter consistently underestimates collision rate (even with the account of preferential concentration).

Domaines: Autre [cond-mat.other]

Gregory Falkovich, Alain Pumir. Sling effect in collisions of water droplets in turbulent clouds. 2006. ⟨hal-00073901⟩