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March 27, 2015

Tracing the trajectories of particles (e.g. a contaminant) released under turbulent conditions.

This figure shows the trajectories of particles (e.g. a contaminant) released very closely together in an evolving turbulent field. It shows that the particle paths differ significantly. So when a sensor detects a signal, it has been "encoded" by the complex dynamics of turbulence and it must "decipher" this complex encoding to identify the source upstream.

Credit: Tamer Zaki and Charles Meneveau, Johns Hopkins University


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