Selective Sensitivity of Open Chaotic Flows on Inertial Tracer Advection: Catching Particles with a Stick

I. J. Benczik, Z. Toroczkai, and T. Tél

Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 164501 – Published 25 September 2002

Abstract

We investigate the effects of finite size and inertia of a small spherical particle immersed in an open unsteady flow which, for ideal tracers, generates transiently chaotic trajectories. The inertia effects may strongly modify the chaotic motion to the point that attractors may appear in the configuration space. These studies are performed in a model of the two-dimensional flow past a cylindrical obstacle. The relevance to modeling efforts of biological pathogen transport in large-scale flows is discussed. Since the tracer dynamics is sensitive to the particle inertia and size, simple geometric setups in such flows could be used as a particle mixture segregator separating and trapping particles.

Received 30 April 2002

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.164501

Authors & Affiliations

I. J. Benczik¹, Z. Toroczkai², and T. Tél¹

¹Institute for Theoretical Physics, Eötvös University, P.O. Box 32, H-1518 Budapest, Hungary
²Complex Systems Group, Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545

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Vol. 89, Iss. 16 — 14 October 2002

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