Book Description

A jet in cross flow (JICF) is examined experimentally by injecting a stream of air into crossing fluid with an aim into quantifying entrainment process and downstream evolution. The behavior of JICF is important to fields ranging from turbine-blade cooling to smokestack pollution and volcanic eruption dynamics. Existing simplified volcanic plume models are tested; most importantly, the near-field contributions of complex interconnected vortex systems, which present significant uncertainties because they assume negligible turbulence. While jets in irrotational cross-flow have been investigated, this analysis has focused on the interaction between a turbulent jet in low and highly turbulent cross-flow created by an active grid. Instantaneous velocity fields were collected over seven planes using particle image velocimetry (PIV). A center-plane (x-y) and six planes parallel to the floor (x-z) highlight the interaction and resulting vortex systems. Various jet-to-cross-flow velocity ratios, Rv, were collected for each plane, which allow for computation of mean statistics and Reynolds stresses. Analysis was focused in five stages: a) identification of differences in the development of the jet across various inflow conditions, b) analysis of the vortex systems through transport and critical points analysis, c) decomposition of the flow structures to identify and remove the highest-order contributions to turbulence kinetic energy and d) extraction of reduced order modeling closure terms and e) optimization of closure terms for the simplified one-dimensional model, Plumeria. These five stages provided a comprehensive description of the role of cross-flow turbulence on the development of JICF. Noteworthy findings include significant changes in wake recovery and the near-wake recirculation region that impacted near-field entrainment; increased entrainment for high cross-flow turbulence after the collapse of the potential core due to increased engulfment and viscous nibbling between turbulent fluids; the presence of shear layer and wake vortices through critical point analysis; and the absence of entrainment and shear layer expansion near the exit. Most importantly, the negligible entrainment near the exit and impact of small scale turbulent features that must be included for any specific model to yield reasonable predictions is highlighted. By laying the foundation for a more nuanced approach to JICF, it is possible to more precisely summarize the complex features observed in this work through simplified descriptions that can be of benefit to both engineering design and geophysical modeling.