Chaotic advection and relative dispersion in an experimental convective flow

Lagrangian motion in a quasi-two-dimensional, time-dependent, convective flow is studied at different Rayleigh numbers. The particle tracking velocimetry technique is used to reconstruct Lagrangian trajectories of passive tracers. Dispersion properties are investigated by means of the recently introduced finite size Lyapunov exponent analysis. Lagrangian motion is found to be chaotic with a Lyapunov exponent which depends on the Rayleigh number as Ra-1/2. The power law scaling is explained in terms of a dimensional analysis on the equation of motion. A comparative study shows that the fixed scale method makes more physical sense than the traditional way of looking at the relative dispersion at fixed times. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S1070-6631(00)00112-4].