Title:
Shear layer dynamics of a reacting jet in a vitiated crossflow
Shear layer dynamics of a reacting jet in a vitiated crossflow
Author(s)
Nair, Vedanth
Advisor(s)
Lieuwen, Timothy C.
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Abstract
The jet in crossflow (JICF) is a canonical shear flow that is present in a number of practical configurations including industrial gas turbines. Its complex flow topology, heavily influenced by underlying hydrodynamic instabilities, makes it an attractive configuration to implement when the mixing performance is critical. Past studies analyzing the behavior of non-reacting jets have noted that the overall performance of JICF configurations can be tied to the behavior of the shear layer, which influences both near-field and far-field jet dynamics. As a result, techniques used to manipulate jet mixing and penetration, such as active jet modulation, require an understanding of the dominant instability characteristics of the shear layer. Although this configuration finds extensive use in reacting applications, the hydrodynamics of reacting flows are often fundamentally different from non-reacting flows, and few studies have analyzed the influence of heat release and reactions on JICF dynamics. In addition to varying the momentum flux ratio (J) and the density ratio (S) this study presents a novel method of systematically moving the flame position with respect to the shear layer to gauge its impact on shear layer stability. High speed optical diagnostics including Stereoscopic PIV, OH-PLIF and OH* chemiluminescence were used to quantify the flowfield and infer the behavior of the reaction zone. Moving the flame inside the shear layer was observed to significantly change the jet topology as the shear layer vortices (SLV) were completely suppressed. This was further quantified through a growth rate defined based on tracking the swirling strength of SLV structures. Other structural characteristics including the location of mixing transition were shown to be highly correlated with this extracted growth rate. Time-resolved velocity data was further used to quantify the shear layer spectrum by extracting the dominant instability frequencies and classify the instability behavior as convectively and globally unstable. In order to explain the observed instability behavior, the counter current shear layer (CCSL) model was used to extract an analogous stratification parameter (S’), which along with the counter current velocity (Λ) ratio was shown to capture the stability behavior of both non-reacting as well as reacting configurations.
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Date Issued
2020-12-01
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Text
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Dissertation