Alejandro Perez Alvarado
Published: 2016
Total Pages:
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"The effect of background turbulence on the scalar field of an axisymmetric turbulent jet is investigated experimentally. The present investigation builds on the work of Gaskin et al. (2004), who studied the concentration and velocity fields of a plane jet in a shallow coflow with different turbulence levels and Khorsandi et al. (2013), who studied the velocity field of an axisymmetric turbulent jet emitted into a turbulent background. Different driving algorithms for a large RJA were tested and the statistics of the turbulence generated downstream of the RJA were compared to characterize the algorithms' performance. Variations in the spatial configuration of jets operating at any given instant, as well as in the statistics of their on/off times were studied. The algorithm identified as RANDOM generated the closest approximation of zero-mean-flow homogeneous isotropic turbulence. The flow generated by the RANDOM algorithm had a relatively high turbulent Reynolds number (ReT = uTl/[nu] = 2360, where uT is a characteristic RMS velocity, l is the integral length scale of the flow, [nu] is the kinematic viscosity of the water) and the integral length scale (l = 11.6 cm) is the largest reported to date. Thus, RANDOM algorithm was used to generate the background turbulence for the investigation of scalar mixing within a turbulent jet.The effect of background turbulence on the mixing of a passive scalar within a turbulent jet at different Reynolds numbers was investigated. To this end, planar laser-induced fluorescence was employed to obtain concentration measurements of dye (disodium fluorescein, Schmidt number = 2000) within the jet. Two jet Reynolds numbers (Re=UjD/[nu], where Uj is the jet exit velocity, D is the nozzle diameter and [nu] is the kinematic viscosity of the jet fluid, water) were studied: 10600 and 5800. The resulting statistics of the scalar fields showed that the mean concentrations of jets emitted into turbulent backgrounds were lower than those of jets emitted into a quiescent background near the centerline. However, near the edges of the jet (r/x>0.15), the concentrations were higher for the jets issued into turbulent surroundings. The RMS concentrations of the jet emitted into a turbulent background significantly increased. Examination of the probability density functions of concentration revealed a higher degree of intermittency of the scalar field. The probability of low concentrations increased in the presence of background turbulence although the maximum concentrations were comparable to those of the jet emitted into a quiescent background. Flow visualizations revealed meandering of the jet issued into background turbulence, which is associated with the increased probability of lower concentrations and higher intermittency. Additionally, the widths of the jets emitted into a turbulent background were increased. For the lower jet Reynolds number, the described effects were more evident and the jet structure was destroyed by the background turbulence within the measurement region, resulting in flat radial profiles of both the mean and RMS concentrations. Comparison of the results of the scalar field with those of the hydrodynamic jet of Khorsandi et al. (2013) revealed a similar behavior of the two fields. However, the most significant difference was the larger radial extent of the profiles of mean and RMS concentrations, which resulted from the meandering of the jet and increased transport of scalar by turbulent diffusion. The flow visualizations suggest that the entrainment and mixing in the jet in a turbulent background changes with the destruction of jet structure, from jet driven entrainment to become potentially dominated by i) increased lateral advection of the jet by large scales of the background turbulence during the meandering of the jet, which is subsequently mixed by its smaller scales, and ii) turbulent diffusion that is significantly enhanced by the turbulent background." --
