Experimental Study of the Supersonic Free Jet Discharging from a Petal Nozzle

페탈노즐로부터 방출되는 초음속 자유제트에 관한 실험적 연구

In general, flow entrainment of surrounding gas into a supersonic jet is caused by the pressure drop inside the jet and the shear actions between the jet and the surrounding gas. In the recent industrial applications, like supersonic ejector system or scramjet engine, the rapid mixing of two different gases is important in that it determines the whole performance of the flow system. However, the mixing performance of the conventional circular jet is very low because the shear actions are not enough. The supersonic jet discharging from a petal nozzle is known to enhance mixing effects with the surrounding gas because it produces strong longitudinal vortices due to the velocity differences from both the major and minor axes of petal nozzle. This study aims to enhance the mixing performance of the jet with surrounding gas by using the lobed petal nozzle. The jet flows from the petal nozzle are compared with those from the conventional circular nozzle. The petal nozzles employed are 4, 6, and 8 lobed shapes with a design Mach number of 1.7 each, and the circular nozzle has the same design Mach number. The pitot impact pressures are measured in detail to specify the jet flows. For flow visualization, the schlieren optical method is used. The experimental results reveal that the petal nozzle reduces the supersonic length of the supersonic jet, and leads to the improved mixing performance compared with the conventional circular jet.