Air Ejector Pumping Enhancement Through Pulsing Primary Flow
Abstract
Improving the performance of an ejector is a flow control problem. Passive methods such as changing the geometry of the mixing tube showed that, for a simple mixing tube geometry of a concentric cone-tube combination, the diameter of the tube had to be at least 4 times the diameter of the primary nozzle. Thus for a 5.13 mm dia. primary jet, a 22.7 mm dia. tube was 27% better than a 17.41 mm dia. tube. A standard Venturi mixing tube with 17.41 mm dia. throat was 100% better. Also the shape of the entrance cone had only a little effect and could be substituted by other shapes. A tube without an entrance shape was found to be still reasonably efficient. Both experiments and Computer Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis show that pulsing the primary jet flow, an active method of flow control, improved ejector performance. The physics of this improvement has been discussed. Pumping effectiveness of the ejector was found to be proportional to the square of the pulsation strength. The details of the many pulsators tested are discussed. The majority of the improvement appears to be due to the initial toroidal vortex the pulsation produces. The improvement was strongest at 127-131 Hz, less than half the fundamental frequency of 746 Hz of the system. The pumping effectiveness increased by up to 4.5 times that for a steady jet. Different types of pulse shapes tested indicate that a sinusoidal pulse superimposed on a steady flow is very efficient. For pulses which have only positive pulse velocities, a narrow pulse was more efficient. The data also showed that a strong synthetic jet actuator gave ejector performance as good as a pulsed jet with primary flow.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA442653
Entities
People
- Daniel N. Miller
- Guang C. Meng
- Neal Domel
- Peter J. Vermeulen
- Venkataramanayya Ramesh
Organizations
- University of Calgary