Slow Manifold Reduction for Inertial Particles with Quadratic Drag

We consider the dynamics of inertial particles in unsteady fluid flows.

At low Reynolds numbers, where the drag force is linear in the relative velocity, it is well-known that the dynamics admit an attracting, invariant, slow manifold which emerges as the perturbation of a normally hyperbolic critical manifold.

However, at high Reynolds numbers, where the drag force is quadratic in the relative velocity, the critical manifold is no longer normally hyperbolic, and therefore its persistence has remained an open problem.

Here, we resolve this issue by a particular application of the blowup method, which transforms the equations of motion to a generalized weighted cylindrical coordinate system, thereby desingularizing the dynamics on the critical manifold.

We subsequently prove that the critical manifold persists under sufficiently small perturbations and derive the reduced equations of motion on the perturbed slow manifold to arbitrary accuracy.

Our reduced equation differs from its linear-drag counterpart in its asymptotic expansion as well as its convergence rate.

Using two examples, we demonstrate the validity of our slow manifold reduction.

We also showcase an application of the reduced equations to the problem of source inversion in a turbulent dispersion model.