Turbulent mixing dynamics of radially injected jets into cross-flows

The turbulent mixing of jets especially in cross-flows is of significant importance for engineering applications. The break-up of a liquid jet in a cross-flow occurs due to the instabilities along the surface of the jet. However, the physics behind the mixing process is more complicated when multiple jets are injected radially and the complex nature of the flow has not been studied adequately. In the present study, we present three dimensional numerical simulations carried out for multiple radially located nozzles injecting water into a chamber at atmospheric pressure conditions. The velocity of the cross-flow at the inlet was maintained at 100 m/s, and the velocity of the nozzle inlet was varied to study the effect of jet-cross flow ratio. Two numerical approaches, one a Volume of fluid (VOF) method was employed along with RAS k-epsilon model to simulate the flow physics. A second, mixed Eulerian (cross-flow fluid) - Lagrangian (jet-fluid) technique was employed along with primary and secondary atomization models to capture the flow physics. A comparison of the two numerical approaches along with available experimental results in literature is presented.