Studies on freejets from nozzles for high-speed mixing applications

Abstract

In this study four different supersonic nozzles – circular, elliptical, tabbed, and radially lobed nozzles are compared experimentally for their freejet mixing performance. With the background of studies by various groups conducted on elliptical, tabbed, and radially lobed nozzles, the present paper aims at a comparative experimental study to compare their mixing performance with that of a conventional circular nozzle under identical operating conditions. The investigation is performed non-intrusively, using digital image processing of the planar Mie scattering images of the flow field. The results of these investigations reveal the superiority of the mixing performance of the lobed nozzles over conventional circular and other non-conventional nozzles.