Effect of gap flow on the shallow wake of a sharp-edged bluff body – turbulence parameters

This experimental study was carried out to investigate the turbulent wake generated by a vertical sharp-edged flat plate suspended in a shallow channel flow with a gap near the bed. The objective of this study is to understand the effect of the gap flow on the turbulent wake by studying two different gap heights between the channel bed and the bottom edge of the bluff body. These two cases were compared to the no-gap case which is considered as a reference case. The maximum flow velocity was 0.45 m/s and the Reynolds number based on the water depthwas 45,000. Extensivemeasurements of the flow field in the vertical mid-plane and in the horizontal near-bed, mid-depth, and near-surface planes weremade using particle-image velocimetry (PIV). This paper is the second part of an extensive study to characterise the gap-flow effects and is primarily focused on the mean and instantaneous turbulence quantities as well as coherent structures. The results revealed that the gap flow increased the transfer of the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) from the streamwise to the vertical component along the vertical mid-plane. In addition, there is a corresponding increase and spread of the transverse component in the transverse direction as the flow evolves in the downstream direction. The momentum exchange by the Reynolds stress is significantly weak in the vertical mid-plane particularly in the lower half of the water depth, but the gap flow enhanced the momentum exchange in the upper half of the water depth by up to 1% of the freestream velocity squared. Furthermore, the intensity and bursting direction of the turbulence fluctuations in the far field are also affected by the gap flow when it is large. Furthermore, the proper orthogonal decomposition results revealed that the flow contains a large number of structures, and their interactions are responsible for deforming and/or tearing apart the structures, and transferring fluid throughout the velocity field

Effect of gap flow on the shallow wake of a sharp-edged bluff body –mean velocity fields

This experimental study was carried out to investigate the turbulent shallow wake generated by a vertical sharp-edged flat plate suspended in a shallow channel flow with a gap near the bed. The objective of this study is to understand the effect of the gap flow on the wake by studying two different gap heights between the channel bed and the bottom edge of the bluff body. These two cases will be compared to the no-gap case which is considered as a reference case. Themaximumflowvelocity was 0.45m/s and the Reynolds number based on the water depthwas 45,000. Extensivemeasurements of the flowfield in the verticalmid-plane and in the horizontal near-bed, mid-depth, and near-surface planes weremade using particle image velocimetry. This paper is part of an extensive study to characterise the gap-flow effects and is primarily concerned with the mean velocity fields, while a companion paper discusses the turbulence characteristics. The size of the wake identified in the horizontal planes is found to vary in the three planes, where the gap flow enhances the entrainment in the near-wake region in the near-bed velocity field. The results also revealed that, if the gap flow is weak, it is engulfed by the recirculation zone formed just behind the bluff body whose axis is perpendicular to the vertical mid-plane. On the other hand, if the gap flow is relatively strong, it penetrates in the downstream direction and only a portion of it is diverted upward to feed the recirculation zone

Confinement effects in shallow water jets

The effects of vertical confinement on a neutrally-buoyant turbulent round jet discharging from a circular nozzle into quiescent shallow water were investigated. The focus was on identifying changes in the mean flow, turbulence characteristics, and large vortical structures of a horizontal water jet at different degrees of vertical confinement. The confinement resulted from the proximity of a lower solid wall and an upper free surface. The jet exit Reynolds number for all cases was 22,500. The depth of the water layer was the principal parameter. The axial and lateral confinements were negligible. Three different degrees of vertical confinement were investigated in addition to the free jet case. For the confined cases, the water layer depth was 15, 10 and 5 times the jet exit diameter. The centreline of the jet was located midway between the solid wall and the free surface. Particle image velocimetry (PIV) was used to investigate the flow behaviour. Measurements were taken on two orthogonal planes along the jet axis; one parallel and one perpendicular to the free surface. For each case, measurements were taken at three locations downstream of the jet exit where the effects of vertical confinement were expected to be significant. All image pairs were acquired at a frequency of 1 Hz using a 2048 ⨯ 2048 pixel camera. This rate was slow enough that the velocity fields were uncorrelated. At each location, two thousand image pairs were acquired in order to extract statistical information about the behaviour of the flow. After completing the cross-correlation analysis of the PIV images and filtering outliers using a cellular neural network with a variable threshold, the statistical quantities such as mean velocities, turbulence intensities, Reynolds shear stress, centreline velocity decay, centreline turbulence intensities, and spread rate were obtained. The proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) technique was applied to the PIV data using the method of snapshots to expose vortical structures. The number of modes used for the POD reconstruction was selected to recover ~40% of the turbulent kinetic energy. An automated method was employed to identify the position, size, and strength of the vortices by searching for closed streamlines in the POD reconstructed velocity fields. This step was followed by a statistical study to understand the effect of vertical confinement on the frequency of vortex occurrence, size, strength, rotational sense, and preferred locations. The results showed that the structure of the flow underwent significant changes because of the vertical confinement. The axial velocity profiles in the vertical plane become almost uniform over the entire depth with a mild peak below the centreline of the jet for the shallowest case, while the axial velocity profiles in the horizontal plane are Gaussian but narrower than the free jet profile. The mean vertical and horizontal velocity profiles show that fluid is drawn from the sides of the jet to its centreline and then diverted upward and downward from the jet axis. The decay rate of the mean centreline velocity becomes slower at downstream locations and the jet width becomes narrower in the horizontal mid-plane compared to the free jet case. The mixing efficiency of the fluid in the vertical plane is significantly inhibited by the confinement while there is a slight effect in the horizontal plane. Also, with increasing vertical confinement, the wall jet characteristics become more dominant. Investigation of the coherent structures revealed that at intermediate distances from the exit the population of vortical structures of either rotational sense is almost identical for all vortex sizes. At downstream locations in the vertical plane, this distribution is changed by the vertical confinement which causes a significant increase in the number of small clockwise vortices. In addition, it was observed that, as the confinement increases, the total number of vortical structures decreases and their sizes increase. This is evidence of the pairing process. Moreover, with increasing confinement the circulation decreases as the flow proceeds downstream on the vertical plane with a corresponding increase in the horizontal plane. This behaviour is consistent with the turbulence intensity results

A rapid non-iterative proper orthogonal decomposition based outlier detection and correction for PIV data

The present work proposes a novel method of detection and estimation of outliers in particle image velocimetry measurements by the modification of the temporal coefficients associated with a proper orthogonal decomposition of an experimental time series. Using synthetic outliers applied to two sequences of vector fields, the method is benchmarked against stateof-the-art approaches recently proposed to remove the influence of outliers. Compared with these methods, the proposed approach offers an increase in accuracy and robustness for the detection of outliers and comparable accuracy for their estimation

Cooling enhancement for engine parts using jet impingement

A computational study has been performed to evaluate the use of jet impingement for cooling applications in the automotive industry. The current study uses an entire internal combustion engine cylinder with its components as a computational domain. An unsteady numerical solution for the Navier-Stokes equations was carried out using Improved Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation (IDDES). The volume of fluid approach is proposed to track and locate the liquid jet surface that is in contact with the air. The conjugate heat transfer approach is used to link the heat transfer solution between the fluid and the solid. The boundary conditions that are employed in the study are provided from lab experiments and one-dimensional simulations. The cooling jet in this study targets the hottest region in the piston, i.e., the region underneath the exhaust valve. Three nozzle sizes with flows at different Reynolds numbers are chosen to examine the thermal characteristics of the cooling jet. The computational study reveals that for a specific Reynolds number, the smaller diameter nozzle provides the highest heat transfer coefficient around the impingement point. The maximum relative velocity location at the impingement point slightly leads the location of the maximum Nusselt number. The maximum temperature in the piston decreases by 7% to 11% as the nozzle diameter changes from 1.0 to 3.0 mm for a jet Reynolds number of 4,500. If a correct selection is made for the nozzle size, the cooling jet can be efficiently used to reduce the temperature and alleviate the thermal stresses in the piston in the region underneath the exhaust valve where the maximum temperature occurs

COMPUTATIONAL STUDY OF THE WAKE OF A PLANE BLUFF BODY WITH A GAP FLOW – MEAN VELOCITY CHARACTERISTICS

This numerical study investigates the shallow wake characteristics behind a vertical flat plate with and without gap flow. It builds upon our prior experimental work on bluff wakes to gain deeper understanding of the flow. Using transient three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations solved via finite-volume approach with improved-delayed detached-eddy simulation (IDDES) turbulence model, it provides spatial and temporal data for the wake volume. The bulk velocity was 0.45 m/s, yielded a Reynolds number of 45,000. This paper marks the initial phase of an extensive investigation aimed at characterizing the impact of gap flow on the mean velocity field. The results revealed the formation of a three-dimensional mean recirculation loop just behind the bluff body whose shape resembles a hairpin vortex loop. The gap flow reduces the vortex loop diameter and increases its spinning strength. Moreover, it hinders the secondary currents causing delayed wake spread near the bed, but enhances the secondary flow in the upper velocity fields and hence, the growth rate.The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the pdf file of the accepted manuscript may differ slightly from what is displayed on the item page. The information in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript reflects the original submission by the author