Experimental and computational studies of factors affecting impinging jet flowfields

An experimental and computational study was made of a single circular jet impinging onto a flat ground board. A 1/2" nozzle running at a fixed nozzle pressure ratio of 1.05 was used in the experimental phase (giving an nozzle exit Reynolds number of 90xlO'), the nozzle to ground plane separation being varied between 2 and 10 nozzle diameters. Measurements were performed in the free and wall jets using single and cross-wire hot-wire anemometry techniques and pitot pressure probes in order to detemine mean velocity and normal and shear stress distributions. Some analysis is also presentedo f earlier measurementso n high pressurer atio impinging jets. Nozzle height was found to effect the initial thickness of the wall jet leaving the impingement region, increasing nozzle to ground plane separation increasing the wall jet thickness, although this separation distance did not seem to affect the rate at which the wall jet grew. Nozzle height was also found to have a large effect on the peak level of turbulence found in the wall jet up to a radial distan ce from the jet axial centre line of 4.5 nozzle diameters, after which the profiles become self-similar. Lowering the nozzle tended to increase the peak level measured in all the turbulent stresses within this development region. The production of turbulent kinetic energy in the wall jet, which is an indication of the amount of work done against the mean flow by the turbulent flow was found to increase dramatically with decreasing nozzle height. This was attributed to greater shearing of the flow at lower nozzle heights due to a thinner wall jet leaving the impingement region. A moving impingement surface was found to cause separation of the wall jet inner boundary layer on the 'approach' side leading to very rapid decay of peak velocity. The point of separation was found to occur at radial positions in the region of 7.0 to 8.0 nozzle diameters, this reducing slightly for lower nozzle heights. A parametric investigation was performed using the k-e turbulence model and the PHOENICS CFD code. It was found that due to inadequacies in the model, it failed to predict accurately the growth of the wall jet, both in terms of its initial thickness and the rate of growth. It did, however, predict an increase in wall jet thickness with both increasing nozzle height and exit turbulence intensity and decreasing nozzle pressure ratio. Modifications were made to the constants in the model to try and improve the predictions,w ith a limited degreeo f successT. he low Reynoldsn umber k-F-t urbulence model was shown to give a slightly improved non-dimensional wall jet profile, although this did not improve the predicted rate of growth of the wall jet