The flow patterns in water are visually obscure to study. I'm looking for small, inert, affordable tracer particles to observe under a camera.
Even in turbulent regime, Matt, the density difference is a factor. As a matter of fact, the diameter of particles should be much smaller than KOLMOGOROV SCALE. Then their interference with flow is minimal.
Well, Matt, I survived with the Science Major working during 50 years. Live kicked me into different fields. The same will be with you, given the time.
Still looking for some affordable range as polystyrene beads are still expensive to my budget. Is it possible to synthesize any suspension of sizes ranging below 50 micron?
Synthesis sounds like a lot of work if you want hollow particles and far from trivial. If you can't afford it beg and borrow is my motto!
A readily available and cheap particulate to use for tracing flows in water is plyolite. Its very cheap to get a large quantity, ungraded (you'll have to find a local supplier). Then you can grade it to whatever size is most suitable for your application. Diameters such as 20 micon up to 100 micron sizes are commonly used, choosing something like a 20 micron range. The density is approximately 1020 kg.m^3, so unless your flow is very rapid compared to the Stokes settling time, its usually important to add a small amount of solute to the water (sodium chloride is simplest, or sugar if you need to use a non-ionic solute in your application). I say usually because I don't know what your flow is and what you aim to measure, or simply visualize. The higher the viscosity the less you'll need to bother with the density or size adjustment. Anyway, I can recommend plyolite. It also reflects white light very well, so that they appear bright and you can achieve high contrast. Hope this is helpful for your purpose.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Engineering
- Thermal Engineering
- Thermofluid
- Fluid Mechanics
- Fluid Dynamics