Iso-thermal flow characteristics of rotationally symmetric jets generating a swirl within a cylindrical chamber

Abstract

We present a systematic experimental study of the interaction between four rotationally symmetric jets within a cylindrical chamber, under conditions relevant to a wide range of engineering applications, including the technology of a Hybrid Solar Receiver Combustor (HSRC). The HSRC geometry is simplified here to a cylindrical cavity with four inlet jets (representing four burners) which are configured in an annular arrangement and aligned at an inclination angle to the axis with a tangential component (azimuthal angle) to generate a swirl in the chamber. In this study, the jet inclination angle (αj) was varied over the range of 25°–45°, while the jet azimuthal angle (θj) was varied from 5° to 15°. The inlet Reynolds number for each injected jet and the number of jets were fixed at ReD = 10 500 and 4, respectively. Measurements obtained with Particle Image Velocimetry were used to characterise the large-scale flow field within selected configurations. The results reveal a significant dependence of the mean and root-mean-square flow-fields on the jet azimuthal angle (θj) and the jet inclination angle (αj). Three different flow regimes with distinctive flow characteristics were identified within the configurations investigated here. It was also found that θj can significantly influence (a) the position and strength of an external recirculation zone and a central recirculation zone, (b) the extent of turbulence fluctuation, and (c) the flow unsteadiness. Importantly, the effect of αj on the flow characteristics was found to depend strongly on the value of θj.