Statistics of the relative velocity of particles in turbulent flows: Monodisperse particles

We use direct numerical simulations to calculate the joint probability density function of the relative distance R and relative radial velocity component V-R for a pair of heavy inertial particles suspended in homogeneous and isotropic turbulent flows. At small scales the distribution is scale invariant, with a scaling exponent that is related to the particle-particle correlation dimension in phase space, D-2. It was argued [K. Gustavsson and B. Mehlig, Phys. Rev. E 84, 045304 (2011); J. Turbul. 15, 34 (2014)] that the scale invariant part of the distribution has two asymptotic regimes: (1) vertical bar V-R vertical bar << R, where the distribution depends solely on R, and (2) vertical bar V-R vertical bar >> R, where the distribution is a function of vertical bar V-R vertical bar alone. The probability distributions in these two regimes are matched along a straight line: vertical bar V-R vertical bar = z*R. Our simulations confirm that this is indeed correct. We further obtain D-2 and z* as a function of the Stokes number, St. The former depends nonmonotonically on St with aminimum at about St approximate to 0.7 and the latter has only a weak dependence on St.