Proceedings of the 7th International and 45th National Conference on Fluid Mechanics and Fluid Power (FMFP)

December 10-12, 2018, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India

FMFP2018–406

Turbulence measurement in Axisymmetric air jet using the Particle Image Velocimetry

Raju Murugan Bharadwaz Bollu Pankaj S Kolhe

Research Scholar M.Tech Student Assistant Professor
Combustion Diagnostics Laboratory Combustion Diagnostics Laboratory Combustion Diagnostics Laboratory
IIT Hyderabad, Kandi, Sangareddy. IIT Hyderabad, Kandi, Sangareddy. IIT Hyderabad, Kandi, Sangareddy.
Email: me14resch11006@iith.ac.in Email: me18mtech01002@iith.ac.in Email: psk@iith.ac.in

Abstract (point measurement and intrusive), Particle Image

Particle imaging velocimetry measurements were carried
out in axisymmetric turbulent air jet for Reynolds number
range covering transition (Re: 2350 to 4000) and turbulent
flow (Re: 5000 to 11000) regime based on jet exit
conditions. Endeavor was to provide near the field
statistical information of velocity field in turbulent
axisymmetric jet of diameter, d = 6.9 mm. Test case of Re
= 11000 was used to validate the PIV measurements
carried out with that in the literature. Radial profiles of
normalized mean velocity and turbulent intensity are in
agreement with previous studies. Transition from top hat
velocity profile at nozzle exit to Gaussian velocity profile
at the end of potential core region is observed. At any fixed
axial location downstream of potential core region, mean
axial velocity profile in normalized co-ordinates show the
same underlying radial distribution for Reynolds number
in turbulent regime (Re > 4000) at nozzle exit.
Keywords:
Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV); axisymmetric air jet;
Turbulent flow, Jet half width, centre line velocity decay.
I.INTRODUCTION
In general, any flow measurement involves
characterizing bulk fluid movement through differential
pressure or velocity measurements. Based on fluid motion,
flows are classified as laminar flow or turbulent flow and
Reynolds number range is useful in demarcating the two
flows. Many real practical flows are coming under the
category of turbulent flow, so it is very important to
understand the turbulent flow characteristics from
perspective of entrainment, mixing and developing models
for simulations of such flows. Velocity field estimation
gains importance from this perspective as one can easily
estimate entrainment, turbulent kinetic energy, Reynolds
stresses etc. Such information is essential for numerical
modelling.
Many researchers[1]–[7] carried out the experimental and
numerical work for turbulent axisymmetric jet for different
fluids to understand the turbulence[8] by using different
measuring techniques such as hot wire anemometer probes
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Velocimetry[9] (planar measurement and non-intrusive).
Viggiano, B. et al.[6] carried out the experimental work for
different fluids such as Helium, air and argon for different
Reynolds number[10] by using PIV techniques. Centerline
velocity decay profile plotted as normalized velocity
{centreline velocity (Us)/ jet exit velocity (Uj)} with axial
locations from these experimental study was not following
any particular trend for decay with respect to the Reynolds
number, which is revisited in the present study.
Present study employs particle imaging velocimetry for
flow measurement in axisymmetric air jet. PIV records the
position over time of small tracer particles introduced into
the flow to extract the local fluid velocity. Although the
visualization technique employed is qualitative, pattern
matching algorithm yields quantitative instantaneous
velocity of particles across flow field from a pair of images
taken very short duration apart. Since PIV requires,
particle seeding, it is imperative to understand the particle
seeding densities in the flows and their effect on pattern
matching algorithm and accuracy of velocity field
estimation The main objective of this study was to
characterize the velocity field statistics in the near nozzle
exit region. Centreline decay of axial velocity, mean and
turbulent intensity radial profiles are presented to
characterize the near field region for transition and
turbulent jet exit Reynolds number
II. Experimental setup
The schematic representation of the experimental setup
is shown in Fig 1. The experimental setup consists of laser
diagnostics unit {Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV)} and
the flow system with compressor, mass flow controller
(MFC) and particle generator/ particle seeder.
The laser diagnostic unit for PIV measurement consists
of a double cavity Nd:YAG laser (Nano PIV, Litron)
delivering pulses of 30 mJ at 532 nm and a progressive scan
interline CCD camera (Powerview Plus 4MP, TSI), and
laser sheet optics to make laser sheet out of laser beam. The
scattered signals from the particles were captured using the
CCD camera. A 12-bit image pair of 2048  2048 pixels
where each pixel corresponds to 110.4 m. The field of
view captured by CCD camera is 226  226 mm2. Proper
calibration was carried out for the entire experimental
matrix to get the correct velocity based on the particles
displacement from one frame to another frame for a given
time interval between two laser pulse. The raw images
(sample 500 images for each experiment) are captured and
imported into Insight 4G software for pre-processing with
Gaussian filter to reduce the random noise.

Figure 2: PIV air jet images (Re = 11000) with time

difference ∆t = 20 s (inverted grey scale).

Figure 1: Schematic diagram of air jet injector with

the arrangement of PIV

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Figure 2 shows a pair of instantaneous images captured
with inverted grey scale wherein seed particles can be seen
in black color. Note that the time difference between the
pair of images to estimate instantaneous velocity field was
kept at 20 s. The instantaneous vector files thus obtained
were used to estimate mean, RMS of velocity components
in the longitudinal plane of laser. Velocity contours Figure 3: PIV velocity (m/s) contour images along with
superimposed with velocity vectors for different axial Velocity profiles at different axial location for Re =
locations (Re = 11000) are shown in Fig .3, which gives 11000
the qualitative and quantitate information about the
centreline velocity decay (refer in Fig .4) and velocity
spread in the radial direction (refer in Fig.5). Nearly linear
decay of centreline axial velocity is observed and results
show excellent agreement with measurements by Lumley
et al. [7]. This mean axial velocity decays linearly as
Ujet/Us = 0.1659  x/d, which is similar to the previous
experimental result (Ujet/Us = 0.165  x/d) by Lumley et al.
[7].
Radial profiles of normalized mean axial velocity from
the PIV results plotted in fig.5, strongly agree with Lumley
el [7] and Wygnanski and Fiedler [3]. Figure 6 shows that
Turbulence intensity across radial direction strongly agree
with previous experimental works [3, and 7]. Based on this
experimental validation, further experiments were carried Figure 4: Centreline normalized meal axial velocity
by varying Reynolds number from 2350 to 10000. Figure decay profile along the jet with the linear trend
7 shows the contour plots with superimposed velocity (Ujet/Us = 0.1659  x/d).
vectors at different axial locations for Re = 5000 to 10000.

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 Figure 5: Normalized radial velocity profile for
different r/x location, which strongly agreed the
previous experimental results.

Figure 7: PIV velocity (m/s) contour images along with

velocity profiles for different Reynolds number
Figure 6: Turbulence intensity of the axial velocity indicated in the figure.
fluctuations across the jet at 60 diameters downstream.
Figure 8 depicts radial profiles of the normalized mean
axial velocity with jet centreline velocity for different axial
location. Note that the radial co-ordinate is normalized by
jet half width (denoted as delta) which corresponds to
radial location where velocity is 50% of the centreline
velocity. These radial profiles conform to Gaussian
distribution much better for downstream axial locations.
Figure 9 depicts the normalized velocity profile across
the normalized radial locations for different Reynolds
numbers in transition and turbulent regime based on jet exit
conditions for axial location 5 diameter downstream of
nozzle exit. Note that x/d = 5 is taken as approximate
representative for end of potential core region.
For Jet exit Reynolds number in turbulent regime (Re > Figure 8: PIV results for axial mean velocity profile
4000), same underlying radial distribution of normalized across the jet for different axial location for Re=10000.
mean axial velocity was observed. However, for jet exit
Reynolds number in transition regime (2350  Re  4000) Fig.10 shows the centreline velocity decay with respect to
velocity distribution particularly at outer radial location is the normalized axial location for different Re. Magnitude
significantly different indicating difference in transport of axial gradient reduces with increasing Reynolds number,
mechanism. which could be attributed to momentum dominated jet and

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reduced radial spread. Note that even though the centreline
velocity decay is different for different Reynolds number
the radial profile show universal shape in normalized co-
ordinates, which makes interesting case for investigating
velocity mixing patterns through proper orthogonal
decomposition technique.
Figure 9: PIV results for mean axial centreline velocity
profile for different Reynolds number at axial position
of x/d = 5.
Figure 10: Normalized centreline velocity for different
Reynolds number.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
PIV measurements were carried out in near field region for
axisymmetric turbulent air jet in transition and turbulent
flow regimes based on Reynolds number at nozzle exit.
Observations lead to following conclusions.
 Top hat velocity profile is observed immediate
downstream of nozzle exit and the nearest axial
location to nozzle exit where Gaussian velocity profile
is observed marks the end of potential core region.
 For transition flow (jet exit Re < 4000), transport
mechanism is different as evident by varying mean
velocity profile in normalized co-ordinates in near field
region.
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 At far downstream locations, there exist underlying
same distribution in normalized co-ordinates for mean
velocity and turbulent intensity radial profiles.
 Beyond potential core-region, normalized centreline
axial velocity decay profile is observed to be linear
with decreasing slope at higher Reynolds number.
Acknowledgements
Authors are also grateful to MHRD for providing
research fellowship. Authors would also like to
acknowledge Department of Science and Technology
Grant No. ECR/2015/000365, for supporting the capital
equipment costs and consumables for the experimentation.
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