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Numerical simulation of high-speed turbulent water jets in air

Anirban Guhaa; Ronald M. Barrona; Ram Balachandarb

a
Department of Mechanical, Automotive and Materials Engineering, University of Windsor, Windsor,
ON, Canada b Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Windsor, Windsor,
ON, Canada
Online publication date: 18 March 2010

To cite this Article Guha, Anirban , Barron, Ronald M. and Balachandar, Ram(2010) 'Numerical simulation of high-speed

turbulent water jets in air', Journal of Hydraulic Research, 48: 1, 119 124
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00221680903568667
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Journal of Hydraulic Research Vol. 48, No. 1 (2010), pp. 119 124
doi:10.1080/00221680903568667
# 2010 International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research

Technical note

Numerical simulation of high-speed turbulent water jets in air

ANIRBAN GUHA, Department of Mechanical, Automotive and Materials Engineering, University of Windsor,
Windsor, ON, Canada N9B3P4. Present address: Department of Civil Engineering, University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T1Z4.
Email: aguha@interchange.ubc.ca (author for correspondence)
RONALD M. BARRON, Department of Mechanical, Automotive and Materials Engineering, University of Windsor,
Windsor, ON, Canada N9B3P4.
Email: az3@uwindsor.ca

Downloaded At: 08:31 22 June 2010

RAM BALACHANDAR (IAHR Member), Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University
of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada N9B3P4.
Email: rambala@uwindsor.ca
ABSTRACT
Numerical simulation of high-speed turbulent water jets in air and its validation with experimental data has not been reported in the literature. It is
therefore aimed to simulate the physics of these high-speed water jets and compare the results with the existing experimental works. High-speed
water jets diffuse in the surrounding atmosphere by the processes of mass and momentum transfer. Air is entrained into the jet stream and the
entire process contributes to jet spreading and subsequent pressure decay. Hence the physical problem is in the category of multiphase ows, for
which mass and momentum transfer is to be determined to simulate the problem. Using the Eulerian multiphase and the k e turbulence models,
plus a novel numerical model for mass and momentum transfer, the simulation was achieved. The results reasonably predict the ow physics of
high-speed water jets in air.

Keywords: CFD, jet cleaning, multiphase ow, numerical modeling, turbulence, water jet
1

jet stream into droplets. There is a high degree of air entrainment and the size of water droplets decreases with the increase
of radial distance from the axis. Due to momentum transfer
to the surrounding air, the mean velocity of the water jet
decreases and the jet expands. The jet region close to the
jet-axis is called the water droplet zone. Between the latter
and the surrounding air, there is a water mist zone in which
drops are very small and the velocity is almost negligible.
(3) Diffused droplet region, where extremely small droplets
of negligible velocity are produced by complete jet
disintegration.

Introduction

High-speed turbulent water jets having velocity of 80 200 m/s

in air are extensively used in industrial cleaning operations. They
exhibit a high velocity coherent core surrounded by an annular
cloud of water droplets moving in an entrained air stream.
Leu et al. (1998) discussed the anatomy of these high-speed
jets (Fig. 1). Much like Rajaratnam et al. (1994, 1998), they
divided the jet into three distinct regions:
(1) Potential core regions close to the nozzle exit, instabilities
cause eddies resulting in a transfer of mass and momentum
between air and water with air entrainment breaking up
the continuous water into droplets. There remains a
wedge-shaped potential core surrounded by a mixing layer
in which the velocity is equal to the nozzle exit velocity.
(2) Main region where air dynamics and continuous interaction of
water with surrounding air results in the break-up of the water

Although the characteristics of submerged high-speed water

jets were thoroughly studied (Long et al. 1991, or Wu et al.
1995), few experimental studies on high-speed water jets in air
have been reported in the literature. Leach et al. (1966) studied
the pressure distribution on a target plate placed at a given
axial distance from the nozzle. They demonstrated that the

Revision received 27 August 2009/Open for discussion until 31 August 2010.

ISSN 0022-1686 print/ISSN 1814-2079 online
http://www.informaworld.com
119

120

A. Guha et al.

Journal of Hydraulic Research Vol. 48, No. 1 (2010)

ow region, of which the radial width Ri varies as

p
Ri k1 x k2

(1)

Outside of this region is the droplet ow region, of which the

radial width Ro varies as
Ro Cx k2

(2)

where k1 and C are spread coefcients related as

k1 1:9C

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Figure 1 Anatomy of high-speed water jets in air (Leu et al. 1998)

normalized pressure distribution along the centreline of a jet

depends on the nozzle geometry while it is independent in the
radial direction. The normalized pressure becomes equal to
the ambient pressure at a distance of around 1.3 times the
nozzle exit diameter D from the centreline. Outside this
region, the shear stress is too small to clean the target surface.
They also found that the normalized pressure distribution was
similar for both various inlet pressure conditions and nozzle
geometries.
Yanaida and Ohashi (1980) did similar work and developed
a mathematical expression for the centreline pressure.
Unfortunately, their curve did not provide satisfactory results
for the relevant axial distances in cleaning operations.
Rajaratnam et al. (1994, 1998) used a converging-straight
nozzle of D 2 mm and nozzle exit (subscript 0) velocity
of around V0 155 m/s. They found that the centreline jet
velocity remains constant and equal to V0 for more than 100D
and then linearly decays to 0.25V0 at about 2500D. Surprisingly,
severe air entrainment causes the water (subscript w) volume
fraction aw is the ratio of volume of a particular phase to
sum of all phases present in the mixture to fall drastically.
Measurements along the centreline indicate that aw at 20D is
20%, at 100D is 5% and at 200D is just 2%.
To the best of our knowledge, numerical simulation of this
problem has been reported in the literature in only one instance
yet the results were not validated against test results (Liu et al.
2004). Also their results do not simulate the actual physics
as experimentally observed by Rajaratnam et al. (1994). Thus
the ow physics of high-speed turbulent water jets in air are
simulated. The next step will be to validate the results with the
available test data.

Novel mass-ux model

Due to Leu et al. (1998), the potential core and the water droplet
zones (Fig. 1) are of prime importance for industrial cleaning,
since these zones have a signicant momentum to clean a
surface. Yanaida and Ohashi (1980) analysed the problem by
dividing the jet ow according to radial distance from the
centreline (Fig. 1). The inner region corresponds to a continuous

(3)

and k2 is the parameter depending on nozzle radius. Subscripts

i and o relate to inner and outer, respectively.
According to Erastovs experiment (Abramovich 1963), the
mass ow rate of these water jets follow
 r 1:5 3
_ x; r 
M
1

_ x; 0
R
M

(4)

_ x; r is the mass ux in the axial direction of water

where M
droplets given by
_ x; r aw x; r  rw  Vw x; r
M

(5)

and x and r are the axial and radial coordinates of a point in the
jet. Further, rw is the density of water; aw(x,r), the volume
fraction; Vw(x,r), the axial velocity of water droplets,
respectively. According to the mass conservation principle, the
mass ow rate at any cross-section of the jet is equal to the
mass ow rate at the nozzle exit. If the droplet ow is assumed
to be a continuum, then this principle can be represented as
_ 0 pR0 2 2p
M

_ x; rrd r
M

(6)

_ 0 , the mass ux of water drowhere R0 is the nozzle radius and M

plets at nozzle exit. Using Eqs. (4) and (6), a relation between the
centreline mass ux and the nozzle exit mass ux is obtained as
_ 2
_ x; 0 5:62M 0 R0
M
R2

(7)

The mass ux of water droplets at any point in the jet can be

expressed in terms of the nozzle exit mass ux by substituting
Eq. (4) in Eq. (7), resulting in
 1:5 3
_ 2 
_ x; r 5:62M 0 RN 1
r
M
R2
R

(8)

_ 0 rw0  aw0  Vw0

M

(9)

Let

Journal of Hydraulic Research Vol. 48, No. 1 (2010)

where aw0 is the volume fraction and Vw0 the axial velocity of
water droplets at the nozzle exit. aw0 is assumed to be 100%.
Substituting Eq. (9) into Eq. (8) gives

Numerical simulation of high-speed turbulent water jets in air

model for multiphase ows are, respectively,



@aw rw
r  aw rw ~vw
@t
X
_ a!w
m
_ w!a Sw


 r 1:5 3
5:62  rw  aw0  Vw0  R20
_
1

M x; r
R2
R
(10)
Equation (10) is the polynomial function based on an empirical
mass-ux model. If the nozzle exit velocity is properly known,
this model can be used to estimate the ow characteristics of
high-speed water jets in air.

121

(11)

iw;a



@aw rw ~vw
r  aw rw ~vw ~vw
aw rp r  t

w
@t
Q

aw rw g
X

_ a!w ~va!w
m
_ w!a ~vw!a F~ w
Kwa ~vw
~va m

iw;a

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(12)

Numerical simulation

The objective is to perform numerical simulations of high-speed

turbulent water jets in air and to compare the results with
published test data of Rajaratnam et al. (1994, 1998) and
Leach et al. (1966). Equation (10) needs therefore to be
coupled with the continuity and momentum equations of
turbulent multiphase ows.
The computational domain (Fig. 2) and a structured grid
system were created in the commercial mesh generation
package GAMBIT. Since this problem involves circular jets,
only half of the domain was simulated in a two-dimensional
axis-symmetric space. The computational space was 1000 mm 
500 mm, and a tightly clustered grid was ensured in the regions
where larger ow gradients are expected. The radial extent of
the domain was large enough to ensure that the pressure outlet
boundary condition (set to atmospheric pressure) and the wall
boundary conditions can be accurately applied, i.e. without
adversely affecting the ow eld. The radial width of the velocity
inlet boundary (set at 155 m/s) was 1 mm as per the test conditions
of Rajaratnam et al. (1994, 1998).
FLUENT was applied as the ow solver. The Eulerian
multiphase model and the standard k 1 turbulence model with
standard wall functions were used to capture the ow physics.
Water was treated as the secondary phase. The drag coefcient
between the phases was determined by the Schiller Naumann
equation (Schiller and Naumann 1935). The continuity and
momentum equations for the water phase in the Eulerian

_ w!a is the mass transfer from the water phase to the

The term m
air (subscript a) phase. In the physical problem, the surrounding air is entrained into the jet and the mass of air in the jet
_ a!w
increases. To implement this process numerically, both m
and Sw are mass source terms for the water phase, were set to
_ w!a as the only mass source term at the right
zero, leaving m
hand side of Eq. (11). Note that physically there is no mass
transfer between air and water; it is used because of the ease in
numerical implementation in FLUENT. Since the mass ux of
the water phase at all points in the domain is known from the
empirical mass ux model by Eq. (10), it was incorporated
into the continuity equation (11) as
_ ; 0
_ w!a r  M
m

(13)

_ w!a ~vw!a ) in
The source term due to the momentum transfer (m
Eq. (12) is automatically handled by FLUENT once the mass
transfer is specied, namely by
~vw!a ~va

if

_ w!a . 0
m

~vw!a ~vw

if

_ w!a < 0
m

(14)

The term Kwa ~vw
~va in Eq. (12) represents the inter-phase
interaction force and Kwa is the inter-phase momentum exchange
coefcient. The incorporation of Eq. (13) in the continuity equation
is accomplished, using user dened functions in FLUENT.
The k 1 mixture turbulence model was used for turbulence
modelling. The transport equations are:




@rm k
t;m
r  rm k~vm r 
rk Gk;m
rm 1 (15)
sk
@t

Figure 2 Computational domain, boundary conditions and meshing



@rm 1
r  rm 1~vm
@t


1
t;m
r1 C11 Gk;m
C21 rm 1;
r
s1
k

(16)

122

A. Guha et al.

Table 1

Journal of Hydraulic Research Vol. 48, No. 1 (2010)

Discretization schemes for jet ow

Variable

Discretization scheme

Time
Momentum
Volume fraction
Turbulent kinetic energy
Turbulent dissipation rate

First-order implicit
QUICK
QUICK
Second-order upwind
Second-order upwind

where rm is the mixture density and ~vm , the mixture velocity. The
turbulent viscosity mt,m and the production of turbulent kinetic
energy Gk,m are calculated as

mt;m rm Cm

k2
1

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T 
Gk;m mt;m r~vm r~vm

(17)

(18)

The model constants are the standard values C11 1.44, C21.
1.92, Cm 0.09, sk 1.0, s1 1.3. Standard wall functions
were used to model near wall ows. For brevity, the description
of standard wall functions is not discussed. Interested readers
refer to the FLUENT 6.3.26 user manual for details.
Pressure velocity coupling was achieved using the phasecoupled SIMPLE algorithm. All the residuals tolerances were
set to 1026 and the time step size was 1025 s. The program
was run for a time long enough to attain quasi-steady state.
The default under-relaxation parameters of FLUENT were
used in the computation. The discretization schemes used in
the simulation are listed in Table 1.
4

Figure 4 Numerical simulations of normalized centreline water-phase

velocity and comparison with experimental results of Rajaratnam et al.
(1994)

Results

Figures 35 compare the simulation results with that of the published test data of Rajaratnam et al. (1994, 1998) and Leach et al.
(1966). Rajaratnam et al. found that the jet centreline velocity V0
remains constant for more than 100D and then decays linearly to
about 0.25V0 at about 2500D. Severe air entrainment causes the

Figure 3 Numerical simulation of decay of centreline water-phase

volume fraction and comparison with experimental results of
Rajaratnam et al. (1998)

Figure 5 Velocity distribution at x/D 100, 200, 300 and comparison

with experimental results of Rajaratnam et al. (1994)

water volume fraction aw to fall drastically from 20% at 20D

to 5% at 100D. Figures 3 and 4 conrm that the simulation
accurately predicts the centreline characteristics.
Figure 5 shows the velocity proles for x/D 100, 200 and
300. In comparison to Rajaratnam et al. (1994), the velocity distribution gives good results within a radial width of 5D. Outside
this region, the water mist zone is more prominent. Since the mist
zone is formed of sparse droplet ows, the continuum hypothesis
as a basic assumption of Eulerian model becomes invalid; hence,
the model is no longer suitable to capture the ow physics.
Note that the mist zone has little effect in cleaning applications; hence its modelling is not a major concern. Thus, we
can conclude that the simulation results match reasonably well
with the test data of Rajaratnam et al. (1994, 1998).
Figures 6 and 7 show the velocity and volume fraction
contours of the water-phase up to x/D 10. These gures are
drawn to the same geometric scale, giving a quantitative
comparison between the two contours. The volume fraction
contour shows that the water-phase volume fraction decays
sharply with increased radial distance while the velocity
contour indicates that the velocity magnitude remains almost
constant for considerable radial distance. The velocity contour
is much wider than the volume fraction contour. This observation
is in agreement with Rajaratnam and Albers (1998) yet they did
not provide the results of volume fraction distribution in the
radial direction. Thus, it can be concluded that a considerable

Journal of Hydraulic Research Vol. 48, No. 1 (2010)

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Figure 6 Contour of water-phase volume fraction in jet (within x/

D 10)

Numerical simulation of high-speed turbulent water jets in air

123

Figure 9 Water-phase volume fraction at x/D 10, 20 and 30

amount of air is entrained within the jet. Near the outer jet region,
the co-owing air carries the water droplets (of negligible
volume fraction) and has considerably high velocity. Near the
centreline, the entrained air has a relatively high volume fraction
increasing radially, and moving with identical velocity as the
water phase.
The radial distribution of the volume fraction and the waterphase velocity within x/D 30 is of major importance in
cleaning and cutting applications. Figures 8 and 9 respectively
show the water-phase velocity and volume fraction distributions
at various axial locations. From Fig. 8, it is obvious that the
potential core still exists at x/D 30. Figure 9 shows that the
volume fraction of water drops from 0.43 at x/D 10 to 0.21
at x/D 30, indicating the amount of air entrainment along

the centreline. The distribution of water-phase volume fraction

is expected to be Gaussian (Rajaratnam and Albers 1998), but
the simulation results show a distribution close to Gaussian
with a bulge at the jet air interface. Since it is impossible to
predict the mist region with an Eulerian approach, the volume
fraction of water actually lost as mist numerically accumulates
near the jet air interface and produces the erroneous bulging
effect. The bulging effect attens out with increased axial
distance. The entrained air ows with the same velocity as the
water-phase, but owing to low air density in comparison to
water (1:815); the momentum delivered to cutting or cleaning
surface is signicantly reduced.
From an application point of view, the pressure distribution on
a target (subscript T) plate PT placed perpendicularly to the jet
ow eld is of prime concern. Since the jet loses a sufcient
amount of centreline pressure PT(x,0) as it travels, the target
plate should be kept near the nozzle exit to ensure efcient
cutting or cleaning. It is essential for the simulation to predict
the pressure distribution at the target plate accurately, hence
the test conditions with a jet velocity of 350 m/s and nozzle
radius of 0.5 mm of Leach et al. (1966) were numerically
implemented. Figure 10 compares the simulation results with
the experiment.
The numerical simulation matches well near the centreline
but deviates slightly toward the edge. Leach et al. (1966) used
a third-order polynomial curve t for their test data to represent

Figure 8 Water-phase velocity at x/D 10, 20 and 30

Figure 10 Normalized pressure distribution on a target plate placed at

76D and comparison with Leach et al. (1966)

Figure 7 Contour of water-phase velocity in jet (within x/D 10)

124

A. Guha et al.

Journal of Hydraulic Research Vol. 48, No. 1 (2010)

Greek symbols
1 turbulent dissipation rate
m viscosity
r density

Subscripts

Figure 11 Experimental normalized target pressure along radial direction and comparison with Leach et al. (1966) (from Guha 2008)

Downloaded At: 08:31 22 June 2010

the radial pressure distribution. According to Guha (2008),

the test results for different nozzle exit velocities indicate
that the Gaussian t is more appropriate (Fig. 11). Since the
present simulation results resemble the Gaussian distribution,
the ow physics are more accurately predicted than by the
experiments.
5

Conclusions

Numerical simulations were performed to capture the entrainment of surrounding air into high-speed water jets. The
simulation reasonably predicts velocity, pressure and volume
fraction distributions of high-speed water jets in air. The results
accurately describe the centreline characteristics, but underpredict the velocity and over-predict the volume fraction
distribution near the jet edge. Since the near-edge region is
predominantly a sparse droplet ow region, the Eulerian models
fail to accurately capture the physics. The proposed simulation
methodology is helpful for predicting the ow behaviour of jets
used in industrial cleaning applications since these focus on the
near-eld jet region.

Notation
D
F
G
k1, C
_ x; r
M
_
m
P
r
R
S
x

diameter of nozzle
momentum source term
production of turbulent kinetic energy
spread coefcients
axial mass ux of water droplets
mass transfer
pressure
radial distance
radial width of jet droplet zone
mass source term
axial distance

a air
i inner
m mixture
o outer
t turbulent
w water
0 nozzle outlet

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