Confinement effects in shallow water jets
Date
2006-08-18
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
Type
Degree Level
Doctoral
Abstract
The effects of vertical confinement on a neutrally-buoyant turbulent round jet discharging from a circular nozzle into quiescent shallow water were investigated. The focus was on identifying changes in the mean flow, turbulence characteristics, and large vortical structures of a horizontal water jet at different degrees of vertical confinement. The confinement resulted from the proximity of a lower solid wall and an upper free surface. The jet exit Reynolds number for all cases was 22,500. The depth of the water layer was the principal parameter. The axial and lateral confinements were negligible. Three different degrees of vertical confinement were investigated in addition to the free jet case. For the confined cases, the water layer depth was 15, 10 and 5 times the jet exit diameter. The centreline of the jet was located midway between the solid wall and the free surface. Particle image velocimetry (PIV) was used to investigate the flow behaviour. Measurements were taken on two orthogonal planes along the jet axis; one parallel and one perpendicular to the free surface. For each case, measurements were taken at three locations downstream of the jet exit where the effects of vertical confinement were expected to be significant. All image pairs were acquired at a frequency of 1 Hz using a 2048 тип 2048 pixel camera. This rate was slow enough that the velocity fields were uncorrelated. At each location, two thousand image pairs were acquired in order to extract statistical information about the behaviour of the flow. After completing the cross-correlation analysis of the PIV images and filtering outliers using a cellular neural network with a variable threshold, the statistical quantities such as mean velocities, turbulence intensities, Reynolds shear stress, centreline velocity decay, centreline turbulence intensities, and spread rate were obtained. The proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) technique was applied to the PIV data using the method of snapshots to expose vortical structures. The number of modes used for the POD reconstruction was selected to recover ~40% of the turbulent kinetic energy. An automated method was employed to identify the position, size, and strength of the vortices by searching for closed streamlines in the POD reconstructed velocity fields. This step was followed by a statistical study to understand the effect of vertical confinement on the frequency of vortex occurrence, size, strength, rotational sense, and preferred locations. The results showed that the structure of the flow underwent significant changes because of the vertical confinement. The axial velocity profiles in the vertical plane become almost uniform over the entire depth with a mild peak below the centreline of the jet for the shallowest case, while the axial velocity profiles in the horizontal plane are Gaussian but narrower than the free jet profile. The mean vertical and horizontal velocity profiles show that fluid is drawn from the sides of the jet to its centreline and then diverted upward and downward from the jet axis. The decay rate of the mean centreline velocity becomes slower at downstream locations and the jet width becomes narrower in the horizontal mid-plane compared to the free jet case. The mixing efficiency of the fluid in the vertical plane is significantly inhibited by the confinement while there is a slight effect in the horizontal plane. Also, with increasing vertical confinement, the wall jet characteristics become more dominant. Investigation of the coherent structures revealed that at intermediate distances from the exit the population of vortical structures of either rotational sense is almost identical for all vortex sizes. At downstream locations in the vertical plane, this distribution is changed by the vertical confinement which causes a significant increase in the number of small clockwise vortices. In addition, it was observed that, as the confinement increases, the total number of vortical structures decreases and their sizes increase. This is evidence of the pairing process. Moreover, with increasing confinement the circulation decreases as the flow proceeds downstream on the vertical plane with a corresponding increase in the horizontal plane. This behaviour is consistent with the turbulence intensity results.
Description
Keywords
turbulence, PIV, shallow water jets, coherent structures, POD
Citation
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Department
Mechanical Engineering
Program
Mechanical Engineering