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Virginia Tech

Fuel-vortex interactions for enhanced mixing in supersonic flow

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

An experimental investigation was conducted to compare the supersonic mixing performance between a novel aerodynamic ramp injector and a physical ramp injector. The aerodynamic ramp injector consisted of nine, flush-wall jets arranged to produce multiplicative fuel-vortex interactions for mixing enhancement in a supersonic main flow. The physical ramp injector was a previously optimized and tested swept-ramp design. Test conditions included a Mach 2.0 freest ream of air with a Reynolds number of 3.63 x 10⁷ per meter and helium injection with jet-to-freestream momentum flux ratios of 1.0 and 2.0. Planar-laser Rayleigh scattering and conventional probing techniques including species composition sampling were employed to interrogate the flow field at several downstream locations. Results show that with increasing jet momentum, the aero-ramp exhibited a significant increase in penetration while the physical ramp showed no discernible change. The near-field mixing of the aero-ramp was superior to that of the physical ramp. At the higher jet momentum, the far-field mixing of the aero-ramp was comparable to the physical ramp. In all cases, the total pressure losses suffered with the aero-ramp were less than those incurred with the physical ramp. For both injectors, the total pressure losses decreased with increasing jet momentum. Finally, an analytical relationship predicting the Rayleigh scattering intensity as a function of helium concentration, pressure, and temperature was derived and experimentally validated. It is concluded that these results merit further studies and parametric optimization of the aero-ramp or similar configurations. It is also concluded that further studies may be conducted to establish the absolute quantitative nature of the Rayleigh scattering technique.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Ph. D.
Level thesis:degree_level
doctoral
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Aerospace Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Aerospace Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
1996

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Fuller, Raymond Preston
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Schetz, Joseph A.
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Grossman, Bernard M.
  • Nejad, Abdollah S.
  • Ng, Fai
  • Simpson, Roger L.

Subjects

dc:subject × 6

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright
Language dc:language.iso
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
etd-06062008-154721
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/38092

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Fuller, Raymond Preston. Fuel-vortex interactions for enhanced mixing in supersonic flow. doctoral thesis, Virginia Tech, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/38092