Image processing analysis of vortex dynamics of lobed jets from three-dimensional diffusers

Abstract

The passive control of jet flows with the aim to enhance mixing and entrainment is of wide practical interest. Our purpose here is to develop new air diffusers for heating ventilating air conditioning systems by using lobed geometry nozzles, in order to ameliorate the users’ thermal comfort. Two turbulent six-lobed air jets, issued from a lobed tubular nozzle and an innovative hemispherical lobed nozzle, were studied experimentally. It was shown that the proposed innovative concept of a lobed jet, which can be easily integrated in air diffusion devices, is very efficient regarding induction capability. A vortical dynamics analysis for the two jets is performed using a new method of image processing, namely dynamic mode decomposition. A validation of this method is also proposed suggesting that the dynamical mode decomposition (DMD) image processing method succeeds in capturing the most dominant frequencies of the flow dynamics, which in our case are related to the quite special dynamics of the Kelvin–Helmholtz vortices.