Computation of the Frequency Distributions of Distances Between Particles Randomly Dispersed in a Fluid Flow

Abstract Pulse holography can be used as a method for the experimental investigation of transport processes that occur in flows of dispersed phases. Since a complete evaluation of a hologram involves the measurement and recording of the position of every individual particle, it delivers all the information about the spatial distribution of particles at the instant of exposure. An exact knowledge of the spatial distribution of the dispersed phase is particularly important for those chemical engineering processes which require the spatial distribution of particles to be as homogeneous as possible. Maximum homogeneity is achieved when the particles are distributed purely randomly. For this case, the distributions of distances between neighbouring particles are calculated. They represent a standard which can be adopted as the basis for the assessment of real particle distributions, such as exist momentarily in flows of dispersed phases and are determined by the evaluation of pulse holograms.