Modeling the influence of repetitively pulsed heating on the formation of perturbations at the boundary of a transverse jet in a supersonic crossflow

Abstract

When a supersonic air flow interacts with a transverse secondary jet injected into this flow through an orifice on a flat wall, a special flow structure is formed. This flow takes place during fuel injection into combustion chambers of supersonic aircraft engines; therefore, in recent years, various approaches to intensifying gas mixing in this type of flow have been proposed and studied in several countries. The approach proposed in this work implies using spark discharges for pulsed heating of the gas and generating the instabilities in the shear layer at the boundary of the secondary jet. Using simulation in the software package FlowVision 3.13, the characteristics of this flow were obtained in the absence and presence of pulsed-periodic local heat release on the wall on the windward side of the injector opening. A comparison was made of local characteristics at different periodicities of pulsed heating (corresponding to the values of the Strouhal number 0 . 25 and 0 . 31 ). It is shown that pulsed heating can stimulate the formation of perturbations in the shear layer at the jet boundary. For the case of the absence of heating and for two modes of pulsed heating, the values of an integral criterion for mixing efficiency were calculated. It is shown that pulsed heating can lead both to a decrease in the average mixing efficiency and to its increase (up to 9 % in the considered heating mode). The calculation method used (unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier – Stokes equations with a modified k - ε turbulence model) was validated by considering a typical case of the secondary transverse jet interaction with a supersonic flow, which was studied by several independent research groups and well documented in the literature. The grid convergence was shown for the simulation of this typical case in FlowVision. A quantitative comparison was made of the results obtained from FlowVision calculations with experimental data and calculations in other programs. The results of this study can be useful for specialists dealing with the problems of gas mixing and combustion in a supersonic flow, as well as the development of engines for supersonic aviation.