Investigation of fine scale structure of turbulent and molecular diffusion in coaxial jets of He/CO2 in air by LDA and Rayleigh scattering

This paper revisits the important issue of differential diffusion and provides new experimental results and subsequent analysis that attempts to quantify the relationship between molecular diffusion, turbulent diffusion and their mutual interference in non-reacting axisymmetric coaxial jets of variable Reynolds number. The reported investigation has been focused on the analysis of molecular diffusion of a He/CO₂ mixture in air by combining line imaging of Rayleigh scattering and laser Doppler anemometry (LDA) to determine length scales associated with differential diffusion and turbulent transport. Line imaging Rayleigh scattering was performed applying the index-matching method with a mixture of two gaseous species having scattering cross-sections respectively lower and higher of that of air and the cross-section of the mixture identical to that of the co-flowing air. Any measured variation in scattering intensity is therefore due to differential diffusion between the two species. Instantaneous and ensemble averaged line profiles of Rayleigh scattering intensity are presented and a characteristic length scale associated with differential diffusion is deduced. Autocorrelation analysis is applied to obtain the characteristic scale of differential diffusion fluctuations and the integral length scales of velocity fluctuations, as measured by LDA. Theoretical information from the literature is used in relating these scales to the molecular and turbulent diffusion coefficients, assuming homogeneous and isotropic turbulence, and the ratio of molecular to turbulent diffusivity is estimated as a function of the Reynolds number. The results confirm that the average contribution of molecular diffusion to the effective diffusivity into the air stream progressively reduces when the turbulence level increases. They also suggest that, at higher Re, the differential diffusion remains significant down to the scalar dissipation length scale, and could influence mixing at the molecular level and thus chemical reactions.