Passive scalar mixing in vortex rings

2007 ◽  
Vol 582 ◽  
pp. 449-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
RAJES SAU ◽  
KRISHNAN MAHESH

Direct numerical simulation is used to study the mixing of a passive scalar by a vortex ring issuing from a nozzle into stationary fluid. The ‘formation number’ (Gharibet al. J. Fluid Mech.vol. 360, 1998, p. 121), is found to be 3.6. Simulations are performed for a range of stroke ratios (ratio of stroke length to nozzle exit diameter) encompassing the formation number, and the effect of stroke ratio on entrainment and mixing is examined. When the stroke ratio is greater than the formation number, the resulting vortex ring with trailing column of fluid is shown to be less effective at mixing and entrainment. As the ring forms, ambient fluid is entrained radially into the ring from the region outside the nozzle exit. This entrainment stops once the ring forms, and is absent in the trailing column. The rate of change of scalar-containing fluid is found to depend linearly on stroke ratio until the formation number is reached, and falls below the linear curve for stroke ratios greater than the formation number. This behaviour is explained by considering the entrainment to be a combination of that due to the leading vortex ring and that due to the trailing column. For stroke ratios less than the formation number, the trailing column is absent, and the size of the vortex ring increases with stroke ratio, resulting in increased mixing. For stroke ratios above the formation number, the leading vortex ring remains the same, and the length of the trailing column increases with stroke ratio. The overall entrainment decreases as a result.

2008 ◽  
Vol 604 ◽  
pp. 389-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
RAJES SAU ◽  
KRISHNAN MAHESH

Direct numerical simulation is used to study the effect of crossflow on the dynamics, entrainment and mixing characteristics of vortex rings issuing from a circular nozzle. Three distinct regimes exist, depending on the velocity ratio (ratio of the average nozzle exit velocity to free-stream crossflow velocity) and stroke ratio (ratio of stroke length to nozzle exit diameter). Coherent vortex rings are not obtained at velocity ratios below approximately 2. At these low velocity ratios, the vorticity in the crossflow boundary layer inhibits roll-up of the nozzle boundary layer at the leading edge. As a result, a hairpin vortex forms instead of a vortex ring. For large stroke ratios and velocity ratio below 2, a series of hairpin vortices is shed downstream. The shedding is quite periodic for very low Reynolds numbers. For velocity ratios above 2, two regimes are obtained depending upon the stroke ratio. Lower stroke ratios yield a coherent asymmetric vortex ring, while higher stroke ratios yield an asymmetric vortex ring accompanied by a trailing column of vorticity. These two regimes are separated by a transition stroke ratio whose value decreases with decreasing velocity ratio. For very high values of the velocity ratio, the transition stroke ratio approaches the ‘formation number’. In the absence of trailing vorticity, the vortex ring tilts towards the upstream direction, while the presence of a trailing column causes it to tilt downstream. This behaviour is explained. In the absence of crossflow, the trailing column is not very effective at entrainment, and is best avoided for optimal mixing and entrainment. However, in the presence of crossflow, the trailing column is found to contribute significantly to the overall mixing and entrainment. The trailing column interacts with the crossflow to generate a region of high pressure downstream of the nozzle that drives crossflow fluid towards the vortex ring. There is an optimal length of the trailing column for maximum downstream entrainment. A classification map which categorizes the different regimes is developed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 878 ◽  
pp. 5-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuji Hattori ◽  
Francisco J. Blanco-Rodríguez ◽  
Stéphane Le Dizès

The linear instability of a vortex ring with swirl with Gaussian distributions of azimuthal vorticity and velocity in its core is studied by direct numerical simulation. The numerical study is carried out in two steps: first, an axisymmetric simulation of the Navier–Stokes equations is performed to obtain the quasi-steady state that forms a base flow; then, the equations are linearized around this base flow and integrated for a sufficiently long time to obtain the characteristics of the most unstable mode. It is shown that the vortex rings are subjected to curvature instability as predicted analytically by Blanco-Rodríguez & Le Dizès (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 814, 2017, pp. 397–415). Both the structure and the growth rate of the unstable modes obtained numerically are in good agreement with the analytical results. However, a small overestimation (e.g. 22 % for a curvature instability mode) by the theory of the numerical growth rate is found for some instability modes. This is most likely due to evaluation of the critical layer damping which is performed for the waves on axisymmetric line vortices in the analysis. The actual position of the critical layer is affected by deformation of the core due to the curvature effect; as a result, the damping rate changes since it is sensitive to the position of the critical layer. Competition between the curvature and elliptic instabilities is also investigated. Without swirl, only the elliptic instability is observed in agreement with previous numerical and experimental results. In the presence of swirl, sharp bands of both curvature and elliptic instabilities are obtained for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}=a/R=0.1$, where $a$ is the vortex core radius and $R$ the ring radius, while the elliptic instability dominates for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}=0.18$. New types of instability mode are also obtained: a special curvature mode composed of three waves is observed and spiral modes that do not seem to be related to any wave resonance. The curvature instability is also confirmed by direct numerical simulation of the full Navier–Stokes equations. Weakly nonlinear saturation and subsequent decay of the curvature instability are also observed.


1992 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 598-606 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Kasagi ◽  
Y. Tomita ◽  
A. Kuroda

A direct numerical simulation (DNS) of the fully developed thermal field in a two-dimensional turbulent channel flow of air was carried out. The isoflux condition was imposed on the two walls so that the local mean temperature increased linearly in the streamwise direction. With any buoyancy effect neglected, temperature was considered as a passive scalar. The computation was executed on 1,589,248 grid points by using a spectral method. The statistics obtained were root-mean-square temperature fluctuations, turbulent heat fluxes, turbulent Prandtl number, and dissipation time scales. They agreed fairly well with existing experimental and numerical simulation data. Each term in the budget equations of temperature variance, its dissipation rate, and turbulent heat fluxes was also calculated. It was found that the temperature fluctuation θ′ was closely correlated with the streamwise velocity fluctuation u′, particularly in the near-wall region. Hence, the distribution of budget terms for the streamwise and wall-normal heat fluxes, u′θ′ and v′θ′, were very similar to those for the two Reynolds stress components, u′u′ and u′v′.


Author(s):  
Morteza Gharib

Pulsatile jet flows are found in many industrially relevant fluid mechanical problems. A common feature of these flows is that they are fundamentally a series of fluid pulses. This aspect of pulsatile jets implies vortex rings are a basic element of the resulting flow. The significance of this observation is based in part on the tendency of vortex rings to entrain ambient fluid during their formation, but more so on the recent discovery of the phenomenon of vortex ring pinch off. This phenomenon was characterized for starting jets (individual pulses) showing that for pulses sufficiently long with respect to the nozzle diameter (i.e., sufficiently large L/D), the vortex ring stops forming and pinches off from the generating jet. This represents a maximization principle for vortex ring formation and suggests that any effects associated with vortex ring formation in pulsatile jets (e.g., enhanced entrainment), might be able to be optimized by properly selecting the L/D for each pulse.


Author(s):  
Dwight L. Whitaker ◽  
Robert Simsiman ◽  
Emily S. Chang ◽  
Samuel Whitehead ◽  
Hesam Sarvghad-Moghaddam

The common peat moss, Sphagnum, is able to explosively disperse its spores by producing a vortex ring from a pressurized sporophyte to carry a cloud of spores to heights over 15 cm where the turbulent boundary layer can lift and carry them indefinitely. While vortex ring production is fairly common in the animal kingdom (e.g. squid, jellyfish, and the human heart), this is the first report of vortex rings generated by a plant. In other cases of biologically created vortex rings, it has been observed that vortices are produced with a maximum formation number of L/D = 4, where L is the length of the piston stroke and D is the diameter of the outlet. At this optimal formation number, the circulation and thus impulse of the vortex ring is maximized just as the ring is pinched off. In the current study, we modeled this dispersal phenomenon for the first time using ANSYS FLUENT 17.2. The spore capsule at the time of burst was approximated as a cylinder with a thin cylindrical cap attached to it. They were then placed inside a very large domain representing the air in which the expulsion was modeled. Due to the symmetry of our model about the central axis, we performed a 2D axisymmetric simulation. Also, due the complexity of the fluid domain as a result of the capsule-cap interface, as well as the need for a dynamic mesh for simulating the motion of the cap, first a mesh study was performed to generate an efficient mesh in order to make simulations computationally cost-effective. The domain was discretized using triangular elements and the mesh was refined at the capsule-cap interface to accurately capture the ring vortices formed by the expulsed cap. The dispersal was modeled using a transient simulation by setting a pressure difference between inside of the capsule and the surrounding atmospheric air. Pressure and vorticity contours were recorded at different time instances. Our simulation results were interpreted and compared to high-speed video data of sporophyte expulsions to deduce the pressure within the capsule upon dispersal, as well as the formation number of resulting vortex rings. Vorticity contours predicted by our model were in agreement with the experimental results. We hypothesized that the vortex rings from Sphagnum are sub-optimal since a slower vortex bubble would carry spores more effectively than a faster one.


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