Momentum evolution of ejected and entrained fluid during laminar vortex ring formation

Abstract

The evolution of total circulation and entrainment of ambient fluid during laminar vortex ring formation has been addressed in a number of previous investigations. Motivated by applications involving propulsion and fluid transport, the present interest is in the momentum evolution of entrained and ejected fluid and momentum exchange among the ejected, entrained fluid and added mass during vortex ring formation. To this end, vortex rings are generated numerically by transient jet ejection for fluid slug length-to-diameter (L/D) ratios of 0.5–3.0 using three different velocity programs [trapezoidal, triangular negative slope (NS), and positive slope (PS)] at a jet Reynolds number of 1,000. Lagrangian coherent structures (LCS) were utilized to identify ejected and entrained fluid boundaries, and a Runge-Kutta fourth order scheme was used for advecting these boundaries with the numerical velocity data. By monitoring the center of mass of these fluid boundaries, momentum of each component was calculated and related to the total impulse provided by the vortex ring generator. The results demonstrate that ejected fluid exchanges its momentum mostly with added mass during jet ejection and that the momentum of the entrained fluid at jet termination was < 11% of the total ring impulse in all cases except for the triangular NS case. Following jet termination, momentum exchange was observed between ejected and entrained fluid yielding significant increase in entrained fluid’s momentum. A performance metric was defined relating the impulse from over-pressure developed at the nozzle exit plane during jet ejection to the flow evolution, which increased preferentially with L/D over the range considered. An additional benefit of this study was the identification of the initial (i.e., before jet initiation) location of the fluid to be entrained into the vortex ring.