Turbulent fuel-air mixing study of jet in crossflow at different velocity ratios using LES

In order to study the mixing mechanism of fuel and air in gas turbine, large eddy simulation has been used to investigate the methane jet-in-crossflow with the velocity ratio (R) of 1.5 and 4. This study aims to explore the formation mechanism of vortices such as the hairpin vortices, hovering vortices and horseshoe vortices, the relationship between the fuel–air mixing and flow characteristics at different velocity ratios. The numerical methods in the present work are firstly validated with the experimental data in terms of mean and root mean square values of velocity. For R = 4, the shear layer vortices, horseshoe vortices, counter-rotating vortices pairs (CVP) and wake vortices can be observed, while the jet shear layer cannot be observed for R = 1.5. The hairpin vortices originating from the vortice-ring are lifted and shed from the downstream of the jet-outlet due to Kutta-Joukowski lift. The hairpin vortices are similar to CVP. The horseshoe vortices in R = 1.5 and 4 are formed due to the blockage of the jet (CH₄) and the crossflow (air) respectively, and its evolution is associated with the hovering vortices which only exist for R = 1.5. The uniform index and pr-obability density function are used for quantitative analysis of the mixing performance. The uniform index at X/D = 0 (fuel-inlet) and at X/D = 25 (outlet) are 0.033 and 0.335 for R = 1.5 and 0.130 and 0.047 for R = 4. For R = 4, the jet penetration is higher and the deflection angle of jet is smaller than that in case of R = 1.5. Higher R will provide more region for mixing, therefore uniform index is higher and the mixing is more uniform in the downstream.