Supersonic mixing augmentation mechanism induced by a wall-mounted cavity configuration

Abstract

An efficient mixing process is very important for the engineering implementation of an airbreathing propulsion system. The air and injectant should be mixed sufficiently before entering the combustor. Two new wall-mounted cavity configurations were proposed to enhance the mixing process in a conventional transverse injection flow field. Their flow field properties were compared with those of a system with only transverse injection ports. Grid independency analysis was used to choose a suitable grid scale, and the mixing efficiencies at four cross-sectional planes (namely x=20, 40, 60, and 80 mm, which are just downstream of the jet orifice) were compared for the configurations considered in this study. The results showed that hydrogen penetrated deeper when a cavity was mounted upstream of the transverse injection ports. This is beneficial to the mixing process in supersonic flows. The mixing efficiency of the configuration with the wall-mounted cavity was better than that of the conventional physical model, and the mixing efficiency of the proposed novel physical model I (98.71% at x=20 mm) was the highest of all. In the case with only transverse injection ports, the vortex was broken up by the strong interaction between the shear layer over the cavity and the jet.