DOI: 10.1615/TSFP10
EVALUATION OF OLFACTORY SEARCH ALGORITHMS USING DIRECT NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF TURBULENT SCALAR TRANSPORT
ABSTRAKT
In order to locate food and mating partners, animals and insects adopt different strategies which help them to effectively track down the source of the desired chemical substance. They utilize combined information about the wind direction and the odor concentration. Under turbulent conditions, the advection dominates the dispersion of the concentration, and the wind direction can be a most reliable parameter used to track the plume. Inspired by animal behavior, numerous algorithms have been proposed for plume tracking in both air and water, mostly for two-dimensional (2D) motions. In this study, we consider a turbulent channel flow in the presence of a point scalar source. We have conducted direct numerical simulations (DNS) in order to perform a systematic assessment of various existing algorithms, and provide a reliable comparison. Particular focus is laid on the effect of the velocity ratio between flow and sensor movement on the estimation performance. In addition, we propose an extension of one of these algorithms in three dimensions, for which a similar analysis is considered.