In the field of experimental fluid dynamics, the direct measurement of vorticity remains a challenge, even though it plays a crucial role in understanding turbulent flows. The present study explores the influence of the rotation of nanoparticles on their luminescence anisotropy as a potential novel measurement method. This relation opens a new field of flow diagnostics, based on the measurement of polarized intensity components. Potentially, the method allows for the direct measurement of the vorticity. For this, the canonical flow in this study is a turbulent round jet at ${{Re}} = {12\,000}$ and 14 400. It is confirmed that the flow regime has an influence on the luminescence anisotropy. Using a model of such deterministic rotations according to another work by the authors (Schmidt & Rösgen, Phys. Rev. Res., vol. 5, no. 3, 2023, 033006), the magnitude of the vorticity components is computed, since the presented set-up is limited to sensing the magnitude of these quantities. The computed components indicate the self-similarity of the vorticity magnitude. A large-eddy simulation is conducted for comparison with the experiments, demonstrating good agreement.

We investigate the ventilation conditions required to control the propagation of smoke, produced by a tunnel fire, in the presence of two inertial forcings: a transverse extraction system and a longitudinal flow. For that purpose, we performed a series of experiments in a reduced-scale tunnel, using a mixture of air and helium to simulate the release of hot smoke during a fire. Experiments were designed to focus on the ventilation flows that allow the buoyant release to be confined between two adjacent extraction vents. Different source conditions, in terms of density and velocity of the buoyant release, were analysed along with different vent configurations. Experiments allowed us to quantify the increase of the extraction velocity needed to confine the buoyant smoke, overcoming the effect of an imposed longitudinal velocity. Vents with a rectangular shape, and spanning over the whole tunnel width, provide the best performance. Finally, we studied the stratification conditions of the flow, individuating four regimes. Interestingly, when the stratification conditions fade out, as both the longitudinal flow and vertical extraction flows increase, the flow dynamics becomes almost independent of the forcing induced by the presence of buoyant smoke, which eventually acts as a passive scalar transported by the flow.