UKTC conference, New Forest, September 26-27, 2007

Corresponding author. Tel: +44 (0)208 5477822, y.yao@kingston.ac.uk

DNS of Jets in Cross-flow with Film-cooling Application
Momahed Maidi and Yufeng Yao*
Kingston University, London, SW15 3DW

Rationale: Jets in a cross-flow (JICF) has been extensively investigated due to its wider engineering and
industrial applications involving mixing and pollutant dispersion from chimney stacks, film cooling of
turbine blades, V/STOL aircraft and numerous manufacturing processes. We focus on the blade cooling.

Methodology: Both single- and multi-block versions of 3D compressible DNS code SBLI are used.
Simulation starts with laminar JICF at low Reynolds number and validates against published results,
qualitatively and quantitatively. Further study extends to inclined jets and multiple jets, focusing on flow
interactions between adjacent jets. Key parameters considered are injection momentum and angle, jet exit
shape, distance between jets and their arrangements (side-by-side, in-line and tandem), etc.

Configuration: The computational domain has a size of (24D, 8D, 6D) (with D the jet width) in the
longitudinal, vertical and transverse directions. The jet orifice geometries considered are typically square,
round or elliptic with characteristic length of 1D. For single jet, it is located in the middle of the spanwise
with a distance of 4D from its leading-edge to the inlet. Additional jet(s) were introduced in spanwise (side-
by-side arrangement, and consequently domain size in that direction needs to be extended) and in
downstream (in-line arrangement). Simulation was also performed by multi-block solver for jet issuing into
cross-flow at inclined angles of 30 and 60. The baseline grid for main domain has points of 2418161
with higher stretching in the wall normal direction and jet duct domain of 11x11x11 grids. Additional grid
convergence studies at higher grid density were also performed. For laminar inflow, similarity solution of
boundary-layer equation was used to provide inflow velocity profile. For turbulent inflow, a precursor
turbulent boundary layer was performed separately by using an artificial perturbation technique. Both mean
and turbulence statistics are validated against the available DNS database. Time sequence of instantaneous
data will be stored and feed into the main simulation, similar to that adopted in previous study (e.g. DNS of
trailing-edge flow). For jet duct flow, Poiseuille profile is given at the inlet of jet orifice for laminar flow
and simulation of a fully-develop turbulent duct flow is also under considereation. Laminar simulations are
performed for a jet to cross-flow velocity ratio R = 2.5 and a Reynolds number Re = 225, based on the free-
stream quantities of the cross-flow and the jet width D and the first turbulent JICF case targets Re=1000.

Results: While turbulent JICF work is still on-going, here we present laminar JICF results, focusing on
flow structure and vortex system, i.e. counter-rotating vortex pair, horseshoe vortex and shear-layer vortex.

First, for single normal jet, we demonstrated that the hole geometry has considerable influences on the near
field characteristics of the kidney-shape vortices as shown in Fig. 1. Fig. 2 illustrates that the jet lift-off as
well as the fluid entrainment into the near wall region depend on the hole geometry, in agreement with
previous experimental observations. The maximum jet lift-off is found in the case of elliptic-type geometry.

Second, the interactions between adjacent jets in multiple jets arrangement have important industrial
applications. Initially, two cases are considered, i.e. twin jets with side-by-side arrangement at a narrow
spacing of 1D and a wide spacing of 2D and the third case consists of an additional downstream jet along
the centreline at a gap of 2D for the narrow spacing 1D case. Fig. 3 shows that the downstream merging
between the two CRVPs is strongly dependent on the jet-to-jet spacing. For a narrow gap of 1D, the
merging process starts earlier compared to the wide gap case. Further downstream, a single vortex pair
dominates for both cases. The third jet in tandem case has some effects, but only within short distance.
Obtained results are in good qualitative agreement with existing experimental findings in the literature.

Third, we investigated the effects of jet inclination angle on the dynamical evolution of vertical structures
using the multi-block solver. The jet inclination angle has considerable effect on the evolution of vortical
structures and their interactions (see Fig. 4). Simulation results show that the jet penetration and jet-cross-
stream mixing depend strongly on the jet inclination angle. The highest jet penetration is observed for the
normal injection (Fig. 5). The streamwise inclination weakens significantly the cross-flow entrainment into
the near wake region and the first appearance of the counter-rotating vortex pair (CRVP) is shifted
downstream of the jet hole exit. So far we have presented results described above in three conference papers
and two journal papers are now in preparation.
UKTC conference, New Forest, September 26-27, 2007

Corresponding author. Tel: +44 (0)208 5477822, y.yao@kingston.ac.uk


(a) (b) (c)



(a) (b) (c)
FIG 2: Contours of streamwise vorticity x on (x=6.5D,y,z): (a) square jet, (b) round jet and (c) elliptic jet.

(a) (b) (c)
FIG 3: Simulated iso-surfaces of spanwise vorticity (z=0.5, red positive, blue negative): (a) side-by-side jets with nozzle
spacing of 2D, (b) side-by-side jets with nozzle spacing of 1D, (c) tandem jets with nozzle spacing of 1D and 2D.


(a) (b) (c)




(a) (b) (c)
FIG 5: Vector plots at streamwise location of x/D=6.5 illustrating the jet penetration and
the cross-flow entrainment in the wake region for three inclined jet cases as defined in Fig. 4.
FIG 1: Contours of spanwise vortices z: (a) square jet, (b) round jet and (c) elliptic jet.
FIG 4: Simulated iso-surface of spanwise vorticity (z=0.5, red positive, blue negative): (a) normal 90
o
jet, (b)
inclined 60 jet and (c) inclined 30 jet.