Generation of Supersonic Swirling Flow Using Asymmetric Nozzles. 2nd Report. Suppression of Total Pressure Loss.

Abstract

To improve the performance of a disk MHD generator, it is suggested to install inlet swirl vanes to introduce azimuthal velocity component in the supersonic inert working gas flow at the inlet of the generator channel. But the present proposed swirl vanes cause relatively large total pressure loss and non uniform flow. This paper first analyses the flow field around the swirl vanes and the mechanism of the fluid dynamical loss, then proposes a new asymmetric supersonic nozzle design for swirl vanes aiming at achieving the azimuthally uniform swirling velocity field with low pressure loss. The performance of these newly designed swirl vanes using asymmetric nozzles is confirmed by wind-tunnel experiments and two-dimensional numerical simulation.