An Experimental Investigation of Chemically-Reacting, Gas-Phase Turbulent Jets

Abstract

A new high pressure combustion facility was built to investigate mixing in axisymmetric, turbulent jets exiting into quiescent reservoirs. The facility uses fluorine and nitric oxide, diluted with nitrogen, for chemical product formation that is accompanied by heat release. The average temperature was measured by a set of long, thin, resistance wire thermometers stretched across the jet centerline at 16 downstream locations from x/do = 30 to 240. The Reynolds number was varied through density, i.e., pressure, while the jet exit velocity and exit diameter were held constant. The main result of the work is that the flame length, as estimated from the temperature measurements, varies with changes in Reynolds number, suggesting that the mixing process is not Reynolds number independent up to Re = 150,000. Additionally, the measurements revealed a 'mixing virtual origin,' defined as the far-field flame length extrapolated to phi = 0, that increases with increasing Re for Re 20,000 and then decreases with increasing Re for Re = 20,000. The transition of the jet flow from a momentum-dominated to a buoyancy-dominated regime was identified in another set of experiments.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 12, 1991
Accession Number
ADA243036

Entities

People

  • Richard J. Gilbrech

Organizations

  • California Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boundary Layer
  • Buoyancy
  • Chemical Kinetics
  • Chemical Products
  • Chemical Reactions
  • Chemistry
  • Combustion
  • Data Acquisition
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Fluid Flow
  • Fluid Mechanics
  • Laser Induced Fluorescence
  • Measurement
  • Pressure Measurement
  • Reynolds Number
  • Turbulent Mixing
  • Two Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science
  • Physics

Readers

  • Combustion and Flow Dynamics.
  • Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics.