Effect of Liquid Droplets on Turbulence Structure in a Round Gaseous Jet

A second-order model which predicts the modulation of turbulence in jets laden with uniform size solid particles or liquid droplets is discussed. The approach followed is to start from the separate momentum and continuity equations of each phase and derive two new conservation equations. The first is for the carrier fluid's kinetic energy of turbulence and the second for the dissipation rate of that energy. Closure of the set of transport equations is achieved by modeling the turbulence correlations up to a third order. The coefficients (or constants) appearing in the modeled equations are then evaluated by comparing the predictions with LDA-measurements obtained recently in a turbulent jet laden with 200 microns solid particles. This set of constants is then used to predict the same jet flow but laden with 50 microns solid particles. The agreement with the measurement in this case is very good

Effect of liquid droplets on turbulence in a round gaseous jet

The main objective of this investigation is to develop a two-equation turbulence model for dilute vaporizing sprays or in general for dispersed two-phase flows including the effects of phase changes. The model that accounts for the interaction between the two phases is based on rigorously derived equations for turbulence kinetic energy (K) and its dissipation rate epsilon of the carrier phase using the momentum equation of that phase. Closure is achieved by modeling the turbulent correlations, up to third order, in the equations of the mean motion, concentration of the vapor in the carrier phase, and the kinetic energy of turbulence and its dissipation rate for the carrier phase. The governing equations are presented in both the exact and the modeled formes. The governing equations are solved numerically using a finite-difference procedure to test the presented model for the flow of a turbulent axisymmetric gaseous jet laden with either evaporating liquid droplets or solid particles. The predictions include the distribution of the mean velocity, volume fractions of the different phases, concentration of the evaporated material in the carrier phase, turbulence intensity and shear stress of the carrier phase, droplet diameter distribution, and the jet spreading rate. The predictions are in good agreement with the experimental data

Effect of gravity on methane-air combustion

Analytical and numerical techniques dealing with the theoretical description of the influence of zero and reduced gravitational acceleration on diffusion flames, with a view to improving understanding of fires in space vehicles, were developed in support of experimental work performed in this area. This was done in order to confirm qualitative understanding of the process, to determine the quantitative accuracy of numerical predictions, and to establish a mathematical model of the process for subsequent use as a predictive and exploratory tool. The following results were accomplished: (1) derivation of differential equations and boundary conditions describing the system, (2) details of the computations, using a FORTRAN computer program, for calculating the flow and heat and mass transfer in two dimensions (both steady and unsteady). It was shown that the experimental behavior can be reproduced with fair accuracy, provided that the time step is sufficiently short

Slip-velocity of large neutrally-buoyant particles in turbulent flows

We discuss possible definitions for a stochastic slip velocity that describes the relative motion between large particles and a turbulent flow. This definition is necessary because the slip velocity used in the standard drag model fails when particle size falls within the inertial subrange of ambient turbulence. We propose two definitions, selected in part due to their simplicity: they do not require filtration of the fluid phase velocity field, nor do they require the construction of conditional averages on particle locations. A key benefit of this simplicity is that the stochastic slip velocity proposed here can be calculated equally well for laboratory, field, and numerical experiments. The stochastic slip velocity allows the definition of a Reynolds number that should indicate whether large particles in turbulent flow behave (a) as passive tracers; (b) as a linear filter of the velocity field; or (c) as a nonlinear filter to the velocity field. We calculate the value of stochastic slip for ellipsoidal and spherical particles (the size of the Taylor microscale) measured in laboratory homogeneous isotropic turbulence. The resulting Reynolds number is significantly higher than 1 for both particle shapes, and velocity statistics show that particle motion is a complex non-linear function of the fluid velocity. We further investigate the nonlinear relationship by comparing the probability distribution of fluctuating velocities for particle and fluid phases

Direct numerical simulation of stratified homogeneous turbulent shear flows

The exact time-dependent three-dimensional Navier-Stokes and temperature equations are integrated numerically to simulate stably stratified homogeneous turbulent shear flows at moderate Reynolds numbers whose horizontal mean velocity and mean temperature have uniform vertical gradients. The method uses shear-periodic boundary conditions and a combination of finite-difference and pseudospectral approximations. The gradient Richardson number Ri is varied between 0 and 1. The simulations start from isotropic Gaussian fields for velocity and temperature both having the same variances. The simulations represent approximately the conditions of the experiment by Komori et al. (1983) who studied stably stratified flows in a water channel (molecular Prandtl number Pr = 5). In these flows internal gravity waves build up, superposed by hot cells leading to a persistent counter-gradient heat-flux (CGHF) in the vertical direction, i.e. heat is transported from lower-temperature to higher-temperature regions. Further, simulations with Pr = 0.7 for air have been carried out in order to investigate the influence of the molecular Prandtl number. In these cases, no persistent CGHF occurred. This confirms our general conclusion that the counter-gradient heat flux develops for strongly stable flows (Ri [approximate] 0.5–1.0) at sufficiently large Prandtl numbers (Pr = 5). The flux is carried by hot ascending, as well as cold descending turbulent cells which form at places where the highest positive and negative temperature fluctuations initially existed. Buoyancy forces suppress vertical motions so that the cells degenerate to two-dimensional fossil turbulence. The counter-gradient heat flux acts to enforce a quasi-static equilibrium between potential and kinetic energy. Previously derived turbulence closure models for the pressure-strain and pressure-temperature gradients in the equations for the Reynolds stress and turbulent heat flux are tested for moderate-Reynolds-number flows with strongly stable stratification (Ri = 1). These models overestimate the turbulent interactions and underestimate the buoyancy contributions. The dissipative timescale ratio for stably stratified turbulence is a strong function of the Richardson number and is inversely proportional to the molecular Prandtl number of the fluid