Entrainment Characteristics of Turbulent Round Gas Jets Submerged in Water

Abstract

The entrainment process in two-phase buoyant jets differs significantly from their singlephase counterparts, and is not well understood. Entrainment models developed for singlephase flow are often used in two-phase jetting simulations, albeit with limited success. In this work, Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and shadowgraph flow visualization experiments have been conducted on submerged round gas jets of varying speeds and nozzle diameters with the goal of improving our understanding of the entrainment process in a two-phase (gas-liquid) jet. The total entrainment estimated using the PIV measurements is higher than the respective values suggested by a common empirical model developed for singlephase buoyant jets. A two-phase theoretical entrainment model used for comparison shows an overestimation of entrainment, but predicts the increase in the rate of entrainment with axial distance from the jet nozzle seen in the PIV results.

This thesis also presents advances in PIV processing methodology that were developed concurrently with the entrainment research. The novel Spectral Phase Correlation (SPC) allows for particle displacement to be determined directly from phase information in the Fourier domain. Some of the potential benefits of the SPC explored here include (1) avoidance of errors introduced by spatial peak-finding routines; (2) use of a modal analysis that can be used to provide information such as correlation quality; and (3) introduction of a means of incorporating information from multiple image windows. At low image noise levels, the method performs as well as an advanced CC-based method. However, difficulties unwrapping the aliased phase information cause the SPC's performance to degrade at high noise levels.