Structural development of vortical flows around a square jet in cross-flow

Abstract

The present computational study is devoted to unfolding the complex process of three–dimensional flow interaction around a square jet in cross–flow. The aim is to provide a clear understanding about the structural development of the entire vortical flow field, which may immensely enhance our knowledge regarding mutual interaction among various vortical structures that takes place around the jet. Careful attempts have been made to capture the detailed mechanism of formation of the near–field horseshoe–vortex system and the roll–up process of the hovering vortices. The rolled–up shear–layer hovering vortices, which wrap around the front and the lateral jet–cross–flow interface, are observed to initiate the Kelvin–Helmholtz–like instability. The present study also clearly displays the inception process of the counter–rotating vortex pair (CVP) from the shear layers that develop on the two lateral side walls of the jet pipe. In order to better understand the complete flow–interaction process and the governing flow physics, the simulation was performed for a moderate value of the Reynolds number (Re = 225), and for a jet–to–free–stream velocity ratio of 2.5. The interaction process between the streamwise wall vortices and the developed upright (or spin–off, or zipper) vortices in the downstream boundary layer is observed to contribute substantially in the structural development of the jet wake. The upright vortices were seen to originate from the tornado–like critical points on the channel floor shear layer, and subsequently the vortices lift themselves away from the channel floor to merge ultimately with the evolving CVP. Importantly, such merging processes are observed to locally enhance the CVP strength. Following the topological theory of Legendre, the depicted map of computed critical points and the separation lines helps to provide additional insight into the flow mechanism. The computed results clearly demonstrate the entire vortical flow–interaction process to its totality, including all the recent experimental predictions that are made for such flows. Notably, as it was experimentally verified for round jets in cross–flow, in the present configuration too, the flow separation on the channel floor is found to be the basic source of inception of the wall and the upright vortices. The separated flow in the vicinity of different wall vortical corelines joins to form the upright vortices.