Insights into the dynamics of spray–swirl interactions

2016 ◽  
Vol 810 ◽  
pp. 82-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuppuraj Rajamanickam ◽  
Saptarshi Basu

The near-field breakup and interaction of a hollow-cone liquid sheet with coannular swirling air flow have been examined using high-speed diagnostics. Time-resolved PIV (particle image velocimetry; $3500~\text{frames}~\text{s}^{-1}$) is employed to capture the spatio-temporal behaviour of the swirling air flow field. The combined liquid–gas phase interaction is visualized with the help of high-speed ($20\,000~\text{frames}~\text{s}^{-1}$) shadowgraphy. In this study, the transition from weak to strong spray–swirl interaction is explained based on the momentum ratio. Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) is implemented on instantaneous PIV and shadowgraphy images to extract the energetic spatial eigenmodes and characteristic modal frequencies. The POD results suggest the dominance of the KH (Kelvin–Helmholtz) instability mechanism (pure axial shear, axial plus azimuthal shear) in swirl–spray interaction. In addition, linear stability analysis also shows the destabilization of the liquid–air interface caused by KH waves ($\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{p}$), which arises from the formation of a vorticity layer of thickness $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}_{g}$ near the liquid–air interface. The frequency values obtained from the primary KH wavelength ($\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{p}$) exhibit good agreement with the POD modal frequencies. Scaling laws are proposed to elucidate the relationships between the global length scales (breakup length, spray spread) and the primary wavelength. The breakup length scale and liquid sheet oscillations are meticulously analysed in the time domain to reveal the breakup dynamics of the liquid sheet. Furthermore, the large-scale coherent structures of the swirl flow exhibit different sheet breakup phenomena in the spatial domain. For instance, flapping breakup is induced by the central toroidal recalculation zone in the swirling flow field. Finally, the ligament formation mechanism and its diameter, i.e. the size of first-generation droplets, are measured with phase Doppler interferometry. The measured sizes scale reasonably with KH waves.

2012 ◽  
Vol 622-623 ◽  
pp. 1119-1124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheng Tung Chong ◽  
Simone Hochgreb

The flow field of a lab-scale model gas turbine swirl burner was characterised using particle imaging velocimetry (PIV) at atmospheric condition. The swirl burner consists of an axial swirler, a twin-fluid atomizer and a quartz tube as combustor wall. The main non-reacting swirling air flow without spray was compared to swirl flow with spray under unconfined and enclosed conditions. The introduction of liquid fuel spray changes the flow field of the main swirling air flow at the burner outlet where the radial velocity components are enhanced. Under reacting conditions, the enclosure generates a corner recirculation zone that intensifies the strength of the radial velocity. Comparison of the flow fields with a spray flame using diesel and palm biodiesel shows very similar flow fields. The flow field data can be used as validation target for swirl flame modelling.


2012 ◽  
Vol 625 ◽  
pp. 57-60
Author(s):  
En Dong Wang ◽  
Yan Yin ◽  
Qing Du

Shear-thinning power-law fluid is a kind of non-Newtonian fluid in which the viscosity is a function of shear rate. Impinging jets system is used to study the breakup characteristics of power-law liquid sheets formed by two symmetrical round jets in this study. High quality images are obtained from the experiment with a high speed camera and breakup length is extracted from the images. Closed-rim sheet, web-like sheet and ligaments sheet are observed with the increase of jet velocity. A series of images show that the wave length on the surface of sheets tends to decline as the jet velocity increases. At a low We number, the breakup length increases with an increasing We number. However, it first increases and then decreases when the liquid sheet breaks up at a high We number. The liquid jets with larger diameter collide to each other and lead to a liquid sheet with a smaller breakup length.


2007 ◽  
Vol 129 (4) ◽  
pp. 945-953 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashraf A. Ibrahim ◽  
Milind A. Jog

Predictions of breakup length of a liquid sheet emanating from a pressure-swirl (simplex) fuel atomizer have been carried out by computationally modeling the two-phase flow in the atomizer coupled with a nonlinear analysis of instability of the liquid sheet. The volume-of-fluid (VOF) method has been employed to study the flow field inside the pressure-swirl atomizer. A nonlinear instability model has been developed using a perturbation expansion technique with the initial amplitude of the disturbance as the perturbation parameter to determine the sheet instability and breakup. The results for sheet thickness and velocities from the internal flow solutions are used as input in the nonlinear instability model. Computational results for internal flow are validated by comparing film thickness at exit, spray angle, and discharge coefficient with available experimental data. The predictions of breakup length show a good agreement with semiempirical correlations and available experimental measurements. The effect of elevated ambient pressure on the atomizer internal flow field and sheet breakup is investigated. A decrease in air core diameter is obtained at higher ambient pressure due to increased liquid-air momentum transport. Shorter breakup lengths are obtained at elevated air pressure. The coupled internal flow simulation and sheet instability analysis provides a comprehensive approach to modeling sheet breakup from a pressure-swirl atomizer.


Author(s):  
Tian Deng ◽  
Xingming Ren ◽  
Yaxuan Li

Abstract For the low-speed liquid injected into the high-speed strong turbulent gas flow in the same direction, the atomization is a transient-intensive spray, and there are many factors affecting and controlling the atomization. In this paper, the distribution and characteristics of the liquid breakup in the air atomized flow field are analyzed. A stochastic immersed model to simulate the liquid core is developed, in which, the liquid core is regarded as an immersed porous medium with a random structure, and the probability of existence is used to simulate the position of the liquid core. The initial fragmentation mechanism of the air blast atomization is applied as the global variables of the stochastic process. Using the above stochastic immersed model, combined with the Large Eddy Simulation method, the numerical simulation of the downstream flow field of a coaxial jet air atomizing nozzle is carried out. Additional force is added to the momentum equation in the LES model. Instantaneous air velocity at the air-liquid interface is characterized by instantaneous liquid phase velocity at the same time. The size of the initial atomized droplet satisfies a probability distribution, and once the large droplets are formed, the Lagrangian method is used to track the droplets. The comparison between the simulation results and the experimental results shows that this stochastic immersed model can quickly capture the information of length and position of the liquid nucleus. When the gas-liquid momentum ratio M is 3∼10000, the liquid core length can be predicted more accurately. When M>10, the prediction result is much better than phenomenological model. This model is capable of capturing flow field structures such as recirculation zones and large-scale vortices. The results of initial spray angle from experiment expression give slightly better agreement with this model. Increasing the momentum ratio leads to decreasing of the initial spray angle. The particle size of the droplets near the nozzle can be accurately predicted, especially when the gas velocity is large (bigger than 60 m/s), and the average diameter prediction error of the droplets is less than 10%.


Author(s):  
Amine Koched ◽  
Giuseppe Serra ◽  
Giampaolo Romano ◽  
Carsten Kyal ◽  
Jean Stefanini

The wake flow behind a cylinder of 100mm diameter is investigated using time resolved 2D PIV technique applied to an air flow generated in a closed loop open test section wind tunnel. The flow is seeded using a micro soap bubble generator (BG-1000, TSI Inc.). The bubbles in the air flow were illuminated with a CW laser source and imaged using a high-speed camera. The main purpose of this study is to show features and advantages of using soap bubbles as seeding for a relatively large-scale PIV investigation under low power illumination conditions.


Author(s):  
Hong-Jie Wang ◽  
Ru-Zhi Gong ◽  
De-Ping Lu ◽  
Zhong-De Wu ◽  
Feng-Chen Li

Thrust bearing is a key component of large-scale water turbine. It closely relates to the efficiency of large-scale water turbines, and even determines whether the large-scale turbine can operate normally. With the development of the capacitance of water turbines, thrust bearing will develop to the direction of high speed and heavy load. The structure, strength, lubrication and the characteristic of heat radiation of large-scale thrust bearing were often researched in the past. To study the flow condition of the large-scale thrust bearing and analyze the load characteristics, CFD simulation was carried out on the model of thrust bearing. In this study, CFD method was used to simulate the internal flow field of the large-scale thrust bearing. The model researched was a thrust bearing for 1000MW water turbines. The diameter of the thrust bearing was over 5.8 meters, and the maximum thrust load of the bearing can reach to 60MN. The thin gap between the runner and the pad was usually neglected in the published CFD calculations of thrust bearing. But the thin gap was taken into account in this investigation. 1/12 of the model was used as the computational field and periodic boundary was used in the calculation. The standard κ-ε turbulence model was used to simulate the thrust bearing model, and the flow field in the thrust bearing was obtained. The thin gap between the runner and the pad is a wedge. The pressure and velocity distribution in the thrust bearing and thin gap was calculated respectively with conditions of different thin gaps and different rotational speeds of runner. After that, the relationship between carrying capacity and the size of clearance or the speed of the runner through analyzing the data has been obtained from the results of the calculation.


Author(s):  
Fengnian Zhao ◽  
Penghui Ge ◽  
Hanyang Zhuang ◽  
David L. S. Hung

In-cylinder air flow structure makes significant impacts on fuel spray dispersion, fuel mixture formation, and flame propagation in spark ignition direct injection (SIDI) engines. While flow vortices can be observed during the early stage of intake stroke, it is very difficult to clearly identify their transient characteristics because these vortices are of multiple length scales with very different swirl motion strength. In this study, a high-speed time-resolved 2D particle image velocimetry (PIV) is applied to record the flow structure of in-cylinder flow field along a swirl plane at 30 mm below the injector tip. First, a discretized method using flow field velocity vectors is presented to identify the location, strength, and rotating direction of vortices at different crank angles. The transients of vortex formation and dissipation processes are revealed by tracing the location and motion of the vortex center during the intake and compression strokes. In addition, an analysis method known as the wind-rose diagram, which is implemented for meteorological application, has been adopted to show the velocity direction distributions of 100 consecutive cycles. Results show that there exists more than one vortex center during early intake stroke and their fluctuations between each cycle can be clearly visualized. In summary, this approach provides an effective way to identify the vortex structure and to track the motion of vortex center for both large-scale and small-scale vortices.


2013 ◽  
Vol 690-693 ◽  
pp. 2861-2865
Author(s):  
Sheng Xie ◽  
Yuan Sheng Zheng ◽  
Yong Chun Zeng

Melt blowing is an important process for producing nanofibrous nonwovens. Compared to another technology for producing nanofibrous nonwovens, electrospinning, melt blowing applies high-speed air flow field to attenuate the extruded polymer jet. In this study, the air flow field of a swirl die melt-blowing process was simulated by CFD software, Fluent 6.3. The swirling air profile was shown. Meanwhile, a high-speed camera was used to capture the fiber path below a single-orifice melt-blowing swirl die. The spiral motion of the fiber was revealed. The relationship between the fiber path and the air flow field was discussed. This paper shows the relationship between the fiber path and the air flow field in a swirl die melt-blowing process.


Author(s):  
Antoine Renaud ◽  
Sébastien Ducruix ◽  
Laurent Zimmer

Abstract Despite being good candidates for the reduction of pollutant emissions from gas turbines, burners operating in lean premixed prevaporized regimes often face stability issues and can be sensitive to perturbations. The swirling flow used to aerodynamically stabilize the flame can also lead to the appearance of a large-scale coherent flow structure known as the precessing vortex core (PVC). In this study, a swirl-stabilized combustor fed with liquid dodecane is studied at a globally lean operating condition with the help of high-speed diagnostics and dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) as the main postprocessing method. It is shown that the trace of a PVC originating inside the injector is still present in the fuel spray at the entrance of the chamber even though the aerodynamical structure itself is not detectable anymore. The perturbation of the fuel spray is then transmitted to the flame through local equivalence ratio fluctuations. It is observed that the PVC trace on the spray and thus on the flame can be suppressed by air flow modulations generated by a siren device. The suppression of this trace is shown to come from a decay of the aerodynamical structure itself rather than by a change in fuel mixing or vaporization. Analysis of the characteristic frequency of the PVC shows a frequency spread indicating a loss of coherence of the structure with the high-amplitude air flow rate fluctuations.


Author(s):  
Z. S. Spakovszky ◽  
L. X. Liu

The journal bearings of the MIT micro-devices are located at the outer periphery of the rotor and are designed to operate at rotational speeds of order 2 million rpm in order to enable high-power densities with turbomachinery tip speeds near 500 m/s. These journal bearings are very short compared to their relatively large bearing diameters such that the bearing L/D is typically less than 0.1, that is at least one order of magnitude smaller than in conventional gas bearings. Thus, the ultra-short micro gas journal bearings essentially act as short annular seals and operate at Reynolds numbers of order 300, two orders of magnitude lower than conventional annular seals. The concepts that hold for turbulent flow, large scale annular seals do not apply to micro bearings and the laminar flow regime sets new challenges in the design, implementation and operation of ultra-short, high-speed gas bearings. In order to reach the goal of operating the MIT micro devices at full design speed, the micro-bearing design must be improved and engineering solutions need to be found to overcome the challenges of high-speed bearing operation. This paper is the first to derive the scaling laws for the dynamics of ultrashort hydrostatic gas journal bearings. The theory is established from first principles and enables a physics based characterization of the dynamic behavior of ultra-short hydrostatic gas bearings. The derived scaling laws for natural frequency and damping ratio show good agreement with experimental data. A simple criterion for whirl instability is found that only depends on bearing geometry. The scaling laws together with this criterion are used to delineate engineering solutions critical for stable high-speed bearing operation. Design charts are developed which provide the link between fabrication tolerances, bearing performance, and the tolerable level of rotor unbalance for a minimum required whirl ratio.


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