A COMPUTATIONAL INVESTIGATION OF THE FLUID DYNAMICS OF A THREE-DIMENSIONAL, COMPRESSIBLE, MIXING LAYER WITH

A three-dimensional Euler solver employing Zalesak's multidimensional flux-limiter in a Flux-Corrected Transport (FCT) algorithm has been developed and used for the analysis of flow phe-nomena in a three-dimensional lobed mixer. In particular, results from the computed flow in a subsonic low penetration mixer, a supersonic low penetration mixer, a subsonic high penetration mixer and a supersonic high penetration mixer are used to investigate the effects of compressibility and lobe geometry on the generation of streamwise vorticity and the subsequent downstream evo-lution of the vortex sheet. The main results of this work are: (1) over the range of Mach numbers examined (M < 2.0) compressibility has only a marginal effect on the generation and evolution of the vortex sheet, (2) the dependence of the secondary circulation on the geometry can be estimated through the use of the simple scaling law developed by Barber, Paterson and Skebe in [3], and (3) the vortex sheet shed from the mixer lobe trailing edge exhibits a tendency to roll-up into a discrete, approximately circular, vortical region. Acknowledgements I would first like to thank my advisor, Dr. Choon Sooi Tan, for being a constant source o