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Updated: Jul 23, 2025

Visually Based Characterization of the Incipient Particle Motion in Regular Substrates: From Laminar to Turbulent Conditions
Published on: February 22, 2018
Studying turbulence in a fluid with background damping
1Institut für Materialphysik im Weltraum, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), 51147 Köln, Germany.
Abstract:
In this experimental paper, we demonstrate that turbulence can develop in a fluid system with background damping. For that purpose, we analyze dust acoustic waves, self-excited in a fluid complex plasma where the motion of individual microparticles was recorded with a high-speed video camera. We use the Wiener-Khinchin theorem to calculate the kinetic spectrum during different phases of the highly nonlinear periodic wave motion and show that a turbulent cascade develops at the phases of highest particle compression. We demonstrate that the energy cascade occurs despite the presence of a damping force due to the background neutral gas.
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