Numerical investigation on splitter plate jet assisted mixing in supersonic flow

Abstract

Efficient mixing is of great importance for engineering applications of hypersonic propulsion systems. With supersonic air flowing through the interior of combustor in milliseconds, rapid mixing of airstream and fuel becomes one of the great challenges, and it is imperative to employ mixing enhancement strategies to improve the system performance. In present work the splitter plate jet assisted mixing (SPJAM) strategy is proposed and direct numerical simulations are conducted to reveal enhanced-mixing mechanisms. Both instantaneous fine structures and turbulent intensity distributions are obtained to analyze the flow dynamical behaviors. Mixing layer thickness growth rate and structure topology properties affected by SPJAM are researched as well. The results indicate that the introduction of SPJAM can significantly promote mixing by means of the newly found T-shaped structures and its dynamics. The interaction of T-shaped structure and inherent Kelvin-Helmholtz vortex leads to the breakdown of flow structures, which can obviously increase the interface of upper and lower streams. Turbulent intensity analysis suggests that with the effect of SPJAM, the region where turbulent activity exists is notably extended, and the peak values of the fluctuations are much larger. The evolution of transversely-integrated turbulent kinetic energy (IK) indicates that rapid increase of IK appear in the near field of the flow. Spatial correlation analysis results indicate that vortex size is notably increased with the introduction of SPJAM, especially for that with the strategy set at the front of the splitter plate. Through exploration of the enhanced-mixing mechanisms, present preliminary work indicates that the proposed strategy is a good candidate for efficient mixing, and in the future more detailed work including three-dimensional simulations concerning the strategy optimization should be conducted.