The effects of room length on jet momentum flux

Abstract

As to mixing ventilation in indoor environments, the turbulent jet plays a major role in driving the air movement, contaminant transport, and heat transfer. The main characteristic of a turbulent jet is its momentum flux. By entrainment of air, the flow of a jet increases and may enhance the flooding of contaminant. In investing the jet’s momentum flux, it is generally regarded that the supply jet collides with the opposing wall and the jet is transformed into a wall jet. However, this is not always true if a jet is not sufficiently strong, or the length of a room is large. Therefore, this study adopted computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to investigate the supply jet development and its momentum flux by varying the room length. Initially, the width of the air supply inlet was the same with that of the room. By defining n as the ratio of room length and height, when n = 3, there is a horizontal a vortex which is the normal behaviour. When the room length increased further, the supply jet was unable to collide with the opposing wall. This investigation got two vertical vortices at the room end which is new. The two new vertical vortices were most pronounced for n = 5. It is possible that increasing the length of the room introduces a gradual transition towards a flow in a rectangular duct. This flow is probably very much governed by the side walls. Therefore, this study reduced the width of the air supply inlet by half and maintained the same flow rate. However, a single vertical vortex was identified at the room end for n = 5. In both scenarios, the supply jet may create new vortices that would enhance the flooding of contaminants.