Sweeping jet impingement heat transfer on a simulated turbine vane leading edge

With the development of additive manufacturing technology, it is now possible to design complex and integrated internal cooling architecture for a gas turbine engine. In search of a spatially uniform heat transfer at the leading edge of a turbine nozzle guide vane, a sweeping jet impingement cooling strategy was proposed. Experiments were conducted in a low-speed wind tunnel to investigate sweeping jet impingement cooling in a faired cylinder leading edge model at an engine-relevant Biot number (Bi). Sweeping jets were generated with additively manufactured fluidic oscillator and steady jets were produced by a cylindrical orifice (with length to diameter ratio of 1). Both sweeping and steady jets were studied at varying mass flow rates, jet-to-wall spacing (H/D), jet pitch (P/D), and freestream turbulence. The effect of varying aspect ratio (AR) of the sweeping jet geometries was also studied. The overall cooling effectiveness of each configuration was estimated using infrared thermography (IR) measurements of the external surface temperature of the leading edge model. The sweeping jet provided higher overall cooling effectiveness values compared to steady jet in specific configurations. The pressure drop across each jet was also measured for each geometry, and the sweeping jet shows comparable pressure drop to steady jet.

Numerical Comparison Between Steady and Sweeping Jets for Active Flow Control Applications

A computational study is conducted to compare the performance of an array of steady jets and sweeping jets (generated by fluidic oscillator) interacting with an attached turbulent cross flow. Both jets operate at the same supply rate and with the jet-to-freestream velocity ratio of three. Two array spacings are considered in this study; one is chosen based on the minimum possible distance between the adjacent fluidic oscillators, and the other spacing represents an actuator’s configuration with the least interaction between jets. The improved delayed detached eddy simulation model is employed as a high fidelity turbulence modeling approach to resolve accurately the flow structures. Formation of strong vortex pairs is observed in both actuation techniques with the opposite sense of rotation between them. As expected, the sweeping jet affects a wider region of incoming turbulent flow along the spanwise direction compared to the steady jet. Examining the turbulence properties of the flow downstream of the jets indicates that the sweeping jet is a better candidate for enhancing the mixing mechanism used to control separation. Comparing both the instantaneous and time-averaged flow fields generated by the sweeping jets and steady jets reveals that the interaction between the adjacent sweeping jets at the minimum spacing arrangement is significantly stronger than that of the steady jets.

Formation, evolution and scaling of plasma synthetic jets

Plasma synthetic jet actuators (PSJAs), capable of producing high-velocity pulsed jets at high frequency, are well suited for high-Reynolds-number subsonic and supersonic flow control. The effects of energy deposition and actuation frequency on the formation and evolution characteristics of plasma synthetic jets (PSJs) are investigated in detail by high-speed phase-locked particle imaging velocimetry (PIV). Increasing jet intensity with energy deposition is mainly contributed by the increasing peak jet velocity ($U_{p}$), while decreasing jet intensity with actuation frequency is attributed to both the reduced cavity density (primary factor) and the shortened jet duration (secondary factor). The total energy efficiency of the considered PSJA ($O(0.01\,\%)$) reduces monotonically with increasing frequency, while the time-averaged thrust produced by the PSJA is positively proportional to both the deposition energy and the frequency. A simplified theoretical model is derived and reveals a scaling power law between the peak jet velocity and the non-dimensional deposition energy (exponent$1/3$). The propagation velocity of the vortex ring attached at the jet front shows a non-monotonic behaviour of initial sharp increase and subsequent mild decay. The peak values for both the propagation velocity and the circulation of the front vortex ring are reached approximately two exit diameters away from the exit. Finally, analysis of the time-averaged flow fields of the issuing PSJ indicates that the axial decay rate of the centreline velocity is proportional to the actuation frequency whereas it is invariant with the energy deposition. The jet spreading rate of the PSJ is found to be higher than steady jets but lower than piezoelectric synthetic jets. Similarly, the entrainment coefficients of the PSJ are found to be twice as high as the values for comparable steady jets.