Long-term tracking of neutrally buoyant tracer particles in two-dimensional fluid flows

An experimental technique has been developed to produce and to track neutrally buoyant particles in a two-dimensional fluid flow. The key aspect of the technique is the ability to track particles for extended intervals (over an hour), which is essential for quantitative studies of transport and mixing. The approach is composed of two stages. In the first stage, digital image processing hardware partially processes the images, reducing the data rate to 50 kbyte/s (typically) and allowing several hours of data to be stored on a conventional computer disk. In the second stage, programs extract particle trajectories from the reduced data. The approach is tested in an experiment on planetary-type flows in a rotating annulus. In an appendix, a technique is discussed for fabricating wax or crayon particles with arbitrary density.