Comparative study on interfacial oscillations of rectangular and elliptical liquid jets

Abstract

The instability characteristics and flow structures of water jets injected from rectangular and elliptical nozzles with aspect ratios varying from 2 to 6 were experimentally studied and compared. Shadowgraph technique was employed for flow visualization, and structures on the liquid jet surface were captured using high speed photography. It was found that disturbances originating from the nozzle geometry initially perturbed the liquid column, and then, at high jet velocities, disturbances generated within the flow dominated the jet surface. It was also found that rectangular nozzles introduced more disturbances into the flow than the elliptical ones. The characteristic parameters of axis-switching phenomenon including wavelength, frequency, and amplitude were measured and compared. Axis-switching wavelength was found to increase linearly with Weber number. Also, the wavelengths of rectangular jets were longer than the elliptical jets. Further, the frequency of axis-switching was shown to be reduced with increase of both Weber number and aspect ratio. It was observed that the axis-switching amplitude increased monotonically, reached a peak, and then decreased gradually. It was also found that the axis-switching amplitude varied with Weber number. At lower values of Weber number, the rectangular nozzles had higher amplitude than the elliptical nozzles. However, at higher values of Weber number, this relation was reversed, and the elliptical nozzles had the higher axis-switching amplitudes. This reversal Weber number decreased with the orifice aspect ratio. The reversal Weber number for aspect ratio of 4 was about 289, and it had decreased to 144 for the aspect ratio of 6.