This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation of liquid jet breakup in a cross flow of air under the influence of swirl (swirl numbers 0 and 0.2) at a fixed air flow Mach number 0.12 (typical gas turbine conditions). The experiments have been conducted for various liquid to air momentum flux ratios (q) in the range of 1 to 25. High speed (@ 500 fps) images of the jet breakup process are captured and those images are processed using matlab to obtain the variation of breakup length and penetration height with momentum flux ratio. Using the high speed images, an attempt has been made to understand the physics of the jet breakup process by identification of breakup modes—bag breakup, column breakup, shear breakup, and surface breakup. The results show unique breakup and penetration behavior which departs from the continuous correlations typically used. Furthermore, the images show a substantial spatial fluctuation of the emerging jet resulting in a wavy nature related to effects of instability waves. The results with 15 deg swirl show reduced breakup length and penetration related to the nonuniform distribution of velocity that offers enhanced fuel atomization in swirling fuel nozzles.

Flow unsteadiness in supersonic impinging jets due to the aeroacoustic feedback can lead to practical problems like ground erosion in short takeoff and vertical landing aircraft, high noise levels,...

The quest for the physical mechanisms underlying turbulent high-speed jet flows is underpinned by the extraction of spatio-temporal coherent structures from their flow fields. Experimental measurements to enable data decomposition need to comprise time-resolved velocity fields with a high-spatial resolution—qualities which current particle image velocimetry hardware are incapable of providing. This paper demonstrates a novel approach that addresses this challenge through the implementation of an experimental high-spatial resolution dual-particle image velocimetry methodology coupled with dynamic mode decomposition. This new approach is exemplified by its application in studying the dynamics of the near-field region of a turbulent high-speed jet, enabling the spatio-temporal structure to be investigated by the identification of the spatial structure of the dominant dynamic modes and their temporal dynamics. The spatial amplification of these modes is compared with that predicted by classical linear stability theory, showing close agreement, which demonstrates the powerful capability of this technique to identify the dominant frequencies and their associated spatial structures in high-speed turbulent flows.

Motivated by applications in the propulsion industry, the fundamental study of phase-locked shear-layer instabilities in supersonic impinging jets has been of research interest for long time. While such flows have been experimentally investigated in various research studies using time-unresolved particle image velocimetry (PIV) techniques, the understanding of the shear-layer dynamics is limited, due to the absence of temporal information. Time-resolved PIV measurements for high-speed flows require a large bandwidth, which is challenging to achieve with the current state of technology. An alternate approach using time-unresolved double-PIV measurements is presented in the current study, which provides multiple samples of dual-time data, depicted in figure 1. Such data can be obtained using two co-visual PIV systems, triggered at a user-selectable time-offset, ∆t. As shown by Sikroria et al. (2020), the application of techniques like dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) on time-unresolved dual-time data provides valuable information about the flow structures governing the shear-layer instabilities. The experimental setup for such measurements in supersonic impinging jets, followed by the determination of the relevant dynamical flow structures from the data, will be presented in the conference.

Motivated by the aero-acoustic feedback loop phenomenon in high speed free jets and impinging jets, a thorough examination of a POD (Proper Orthogonal Decomposition)-Galerkin method to determine the average convection velocity of coherent structures in the shear layer is presented in this paper. The technique is shown to be applicable to both time resolved as well as time unresolved data, if the data set meets certain requirements. Using a detailed sensitivity analysis on a synthetic data set, a quantitative estimate on the required time resolution for the technique has been found, which can be useful for both experimental, as well as numerical studies investigating the aero-acoustic feedback loop in high speed flows. Moreover, some innovative ways to apply the technique are also demonstrated using a simulated data set, showing the effectiveness of the technique to any general problem in supersonic jets, heat transfer, combustion or other areas in fluid mechanics, where an advection process can be identified.

This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation of liquid jet breakup in a cross-flow of air under the influence of swirl (swirl numbers 0 and 0.2) at a fixed air flow Mach No. 0.12 (typical gas turbine conditions). The experiments have been conducted for various liquid to air momentum flux ratios (q) in the range of 1 to 25. High speed (@ 500 fps) images of the jet breakup process are captured and those images are processed using MATLAB to obtain the variation of breakup length and penetration height with momentum flux ratio. Using the high speed images, an attempt has been made to understand the physics of the jet breakup process by identification of breakup modes — bag breakup, column breakup, shear breakup and surface breakup. The results show unique breakup and penetration behavior which departs from the continuous correlations typically used. Furthermore, the images show a substantial spatial fluctuation of the emerging jet resulting in a wavy nature related to effects of instability waves. The results with 15° swirl show reduced breakup length and penetration related to the non-uniform distribution of velocity that offers enhanced fuel atomization in swirling fuel nozzles.