The non-reacting flow characteristics of pylon and wall injections in a dual combustion ramjet engine

The influence of pylon and wall injection in coaxial jets of a Dual Combustion Ramjet engine is numerically investigated in a non-reacting flow field. The supersonic combustor is modeled and analyzed using the commercial CFD software ANSYS 18.0. The three-dimensional compressible Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations coupled with the SST k-ω turbulence model have been used to analyze the coaxial mixing characteristics of the jets. The numerical study is validated with the experimental data of the wall static pressures measured in the combustor’s flow direction. The pylon and wall injectors are located symmetrically at the gas generator’s exit nozzle, and the air is used as the injectant to simulate gaseous fuel. Three injection pressures are used for the study to understand the flow field characteristics in the injector regime. Also, the gas generator downstream direction is investigated. The shock waves generated from the gas generator nozzle enhance the mixing of the coaxial jets with minimum total pressure loss. The shock wave interactions are noticed with reducing intensity within the supersonic combustor for pylon injection, leading to higher total pressure loss than the wall injection. The pylon injection provides the spatial distribution of fuels compared to the wall injection in the coaxial supersonic flow field.

Coaxial Circular Jets—A Review

This review article focuses on the near-field flow characteristics of coaxial circular jets that, despite their common usage in combustion processes, are still not well understood. In particular, changes in outer to inner jet velocity ratios, ru, absolute jet exit velocities and the nozzle dimensions and geometry have a profound effect on the near-field flow that is characterized by shear as well as wake instabilities. This review starts by presenting the set of equations governing the flow field and, in particular, the importance of the Reynolds stress distributions on the static pressure distribution is emphasized. Next, the literature that has led to the current stage of knowledge on coaxial jet flows is presented. Based on this literature review, several regions in the near-field (based on ru) are identified in which the inner mixing layer is either governed by shear or wake instabilities. The latter become dominant when ru≈1. For coaxial jets issued into a quiescent surrounding, shear instabilities of the annular (outer) jet are always present and ultimately govern the flow field in the far-field. We briefly discuss the effect of nozzle geometry by comparing the flow field in studies that used a blockage disk to those that employed thick inner nozzle lip thickness. Similarities and differences are discussed. While impinging coaxial jets have not been investigated much, we argue in this review that the rich flow dynamics in the near-field of the coaxial jet might be put to an advantage in fine-tuning coaxial jets impinging onto surfaces for specific heat and mass transfer applications. Several open questions are discussed at the end of this review.

Experimental Study of Coaxial Jets Mixing Enhancement Using Synthetic Jets

Synthetic jets perpendicular to the mainstream have been used to experimentally study the coaxial jets mixing enhancement in this paper. The parameters of coaxial jets such as vorticity, streamwise velocity, radial velocity, Reynolds shear stress, and turbulence intensity are measured using the particle image velocimetry (PIV) and hot wire anemometers. The distribution characteristics of these parameters with and without synthetic jets were obtained. The mechanism of coaxial jets mixing enhancement using synthetic jets was summarized by analyzing these experimental results, and it was also found that the momentum coefficient was the most critical factor for jets mixing enhancement. The comparative experiments fully verified the mechanism, showing that with an appropriate momentum coefficient, the synthetic jets significantly enhanced coaxial jets mixing.