Experimental evidence of chaotic advection in a convective flow

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1999 EDP Sciences
, , Citation G. Boffetta et al 1999 EPL 48 629 DOI 10.1209/epl/i1999-00530-3

0295-5075/48/6/629

Abstract

Lagrangian chaos is experimentally investigated in a convective flow by means of Particle Tracking Velocimetry. The Finite Size Lyapunov Exponent analysis is applied to quantify dispersion properties at different scales. In the range of parameters of the experiment, Lagrangian motion is found to be chaotic. Moreover, the Lyapunov exponent depends on the Rayleigh number as Script Ra1/2. A simple dimensional argument for explaining the observed power law scaling is proposed.

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10.1209/epl/i1999-00530-3