Investigation of jet pulsation effects on near-nozzle mixing and entrainment

Sammanfattning: Turbulent jet flows are very common in engineering applications. One example is that of fuel injection in internal combustion engines, which is closely related to the combustion process. Because of the widespread use, the resulting emissions of such engines have a significant impact on human health and the environment. For a long time, research has sought to improve the mixing in developing turbulent jets to reduce the level of pollutants. Findings have indicated that injection unsteadiness can be used to improve the spray quality. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that important spray characteristics can be linked to physical phenomena occurring in the region close to the nozzle. In this work, the breakup of an intermittently injected jet is investigated using numerical simulations. Cases of both single-phase and two-phase conditions are studied, characterizing the pulse breakup for different injection timing and varying fluid properties. For single-phase pulsation, mixing efficiency is shown to be connected to the generation of different secondary flow structures and their interaction. The breaking of symmetry along the pulse, responsible for the increased the mixing, is explained through a consideration of vorticity transport. This sequence shows local mixing is faster in the trailing region of pulses that are long enough to form secondary vorticies in the corresponding region. The study is extended to include effects of acceleration and deceleration during injection. The mixing rate depends on the accumulation of jet fluid within the generated flow structures. A rapid injection increase or decrease is found to promote the jet mixing and spreading by triggering jet fluid shedding and destabilization of such flow structures closer to the nozzle. Slow velocity changes promote separation of the injected fluid which instead suppresses near-nozzle mixing. Simulations of intermittent injection of liquid into quiescent gas have also been performed. Primary breakup of liquid pulses is assessed by considering the increase of the liquid-to-gas interface area and volumetric decrease over time. The disintegration process for these cases are less sensitive to the surrounding gas flow because of the higher jet inertia. Increased injection frequency and lower injection to non-injection ratio, is observed to stimulate primary breakup. This is due partly to a stretching action near the nozzle, and partly to a stronger relative influence of collision between liquid pulses.