Plume Chamber studies to characterize Turbulent Buoyant Plumes using multiple sensors.

Turbulent axisymmetric buoyant plumes released into calm air are studied experimentally using multiple sensing techniques by a hot-wire anemometer, Schlieren imaging and a FLIR VUE pro thermal camera. Heated Carbon Dioxide is released into a plume chamber under controlled conditions at a nozzle exit Reynolds number ranging from 1300 to 2000. The buoyancy flux and momentum flux at the nozzle exit are varied to study the flow behavior as a function of initial conditions. Time-averaged statistics such as centerline velocity, temperature and plume half-width are calculated using hot-wire readings and image-processing of thermal camera and Schlieren recordings. To better understand the effect of buoyancy on turbulence and mean velocity, a reference case with no buoyancy flux at nozzle exit is studied.