Eect of streamline curvature on ow eld of a turbulent

plane jet in cross-ow

Manabendra Pathak, Anupam Dewan
*
, Anoop K. Dass
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati 781 039, India
Available online 17 November 2006
Abstract
The eects of the streamline curvature and nite edge velocity on the ow eld of a turbulent plane jet in cross-ow are
studied numerically by incorporating the curvature eect in the ke turbulence model. The improvement in the predictions
by the streamline curvature model is assessed by comparing its prediction with those by the standard ke model. The pre-
dictions by both the models are compared with available experimental data. It has been observed that the performance of
the ke model with streamline curvature modication is superior to the standard ke model.
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Streamline curvature eect; Edge velocity; Eddy viscosity; Turbulent shear stress
1. Introduction
The ow eld of jet in cross-ow exhibits distinct ow features that are both theoretically interesting and
practically important. An in-depth knowledge of the ow physics may help in designing and optimising many
engineering problems. Among these applications, the improvement of lm-cooling eectiveness has emerged
as one of the most actively studied topics in turbo-machinery during the last few decades. An excellent review
of the problem is reported by Margason (1993). Even though substantial eort has been devoted to this prob-
lem, many aspects of the ow eld still remain unresolved owing to highly turbulent and three-dimensional
nature of the problem. The interaction of the jet ow with the cross-stream produces large scale coherent
structures or vortices in the ow eld, which control the mixing processes (Fric and Roshko, 1994; Kelso
et al., 1996). These structures along with the side wall eect make the ow eld complex and three-dimen-
sional. However the three-dimensional eects may not be signicant in certain regions of the ow eld.
Ramaprian and Haniu (1983), Haniu and Ramaprian (1989) have measured the two-dimensionality of ow
eld of a turbulent plane jet in cross-ow. They found that two-dimensionality of the ow is well preserved
in a region that ranges up to forty characteristic lengths from the jet slot and which is conned within 12%
of the jet slot in the span wise direction. Their observation is supported by the measurement of stream wise
0093-6413/$ - see front matter 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.mechrescom.2006.10.005
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 361 2582656; fax: +91 361 2690762.
E-mail address: adewan@iitg.ernet.in (A. Dewan).
Mechanics Research Communications 34 (2007) 241248
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velocity by showing a less than 5% variation of velocity. Chen and Hwang (1991) also reported experimentally
that velocity and temperature elds exhibit two-dimensionality in the span wise direction away from the side
walls. Another important feature of the ow eld is that it is characterised by the streamline curvature. The
present work attempts to explain the ow physics of a turbulent plane jet in cross-ow under the inuence of
the streamline curvature.
Besides the complex ow dynamics, diculties in studying this problem are also related to the combined
eect of some other factors, such as, the velocity ratio of the jet and cross-ow (R), injection angle, exit geom-
etry, Reynolds numbers, jet spacing in case of multiple jets, etc. For accurate numerical predictions of such
complex ows, there are several issues, which need careful consideration. (Butkiewicz et al., 1995; Walters
et al., 1995) have systematically pointed out those issues. Among those, turbulence modeling possesses the
nal diculties in obtaining accurate computational results. Streamline curvature and buoyancy are two
important aspects, which require careful consideration in the development of such turbulence models. This
is especially important for the correct prediction of the near-to-intermediate eld of these ows (say, up to
50 characteristic lengths from the jet source). The occurrence of the streamline curvature changes the turbulent
structure of the ow eld. Curvature strongly inuences the production as well as transport in shear layers.
Turbulent shear stresses and kinetic energy are highly inuenced by the streamline curvature. Due to the
streamline curvature, there evolves an extra rate of strain in the ow eld besides the main strain rate. Castro
and Bradshaw (1976) studied the curvature eect on a curved mixing layer and reported a reduction of shear
stress in the region of large curvature which resembles the outer part of a jet in cross-ow. Pelfrey and Liburdy
(1986) studied a two-dimensional curved jet experimentally and reported stabilising eects of curvature on the
inner side of the jet and destabilising eects on the outer side. Another aspect which may also have some sig-
nicance in turbulence modeling is the presence of a moving stream external to the jet. In the present work
both the aspects of streamline curvature eect and moving stream eect in the ow eld of a turbulent jet
in cross-ow are analysed by numerical prediction in a simple and economical way.
Numerous turbulence models have been proposed in the literature to account for the eect of streamline
curvature on turbulent ow elds. In some of these models (Launder et al., 1977; Pourahmadi and Humphrey,
1983; Galmes and Lakshminarayana, 1984) modications are made by introducing some new empirical terms
into the transport equations of turbulence or articially changing the model constants of turbulence models.
Some researchers tackled the problem by solving the Reynolds stress transport model which requires more
computational eorts, or modifying the eddy viscosity in such a way that the anisotropic eect caused by
the streamline curvature is included. Cheng and Farokhi (1992) developed a new modication to the standard
ke model for the streamline curvature eect, which appears to be simple and computationally ecient. In this
modication algebraic formulation of eddy viscosity t
t
is done by extracting the extra strain rate and the main
strain rate of the ow eld with streamline curvature. This correction leads to a signicant reduction in eddy
viscosity around the separation streamline, i.e., in the curved shear layer bordering recirculation. Cheng and
Farokhi (1992) used the model to study the backward-facing step ow and observed a signicant improvement
in the results compared to the standard ke model. In the present work both the standard ke model and
streamline curvature modication to ke model proposed by Cheng and Farokhi (1992) are employed to pre-
dict the ow eld of plane jet in cross-ow and the results are compared with the experimental ndings of
(Ramaprian and Haniu, 1983; Haniu and Ramaprian, 1989) for R = 6 and 9.
2. Problem formulation and computational methodology
The ow conguration and the associated coordinates are shown in Fig. 1. A two-dimensional ow eld is
considered, where the jet is discharged normally with a uniform velocity of u
j
through a slot of width D into a
uniform cross-stream of velocity v
a
. The ow is assumed to be incompressible and the molecular viscosity is
neglected except in the near wall region. The two-dimensional Reynolds-averaged equations constitute the
governing equations of the problem. The turbulence models used are both the standard ke model and stream-
line curvature modication to standard ke model by Cheng and Farokhi (1992). Cheng and Farokhi (1992)
derived the streamline curvature modication to the standard ke model from the algebraic Reynolds stress
model proposed by Rodi (1976). In this modication, eddy viscosity t
t
is given as
242 M. Pathak et al. / Mechanics Research Communications 34 (2007) 241248
t
t

k
2
e
2/
3
1 R
f
/
P
k
e
R
2
f
4R
f
1
1 R
f

1
Here / is a model constant given by /
1C
2
C
1
1
P
k
e
and C
1
= 1.5 and C
2
= 0.76 are the inertial and forced return-
to-isotropy constants, respectively. R
f
is the ux Richardson number given by
R
f

ov=ox
ou=oy
2
Here
ov
ox
is the extra rate of strain which arises due to the curvature in the mean ow. The form of the ux
Richardson number employed in the present work was used by Cheng and Farokhi (1992) for predicting the
backward-facing step ow, where the ow is predominant in the x-direction and is characterised by weak
curvature. The present work is also characterised by weak curvature and the ow is predominant along
the x-direction (the jet discharge direction) in the intermediate region. Hence though the ux Richardson
number is not frame invariant, its application to the present ow conguration is justied as its implemen-
tation is simple and consistent with the physical nature of the ow. With the ux Richardson number
embedded in the eddy viscosity formulation, streamline curvature can inuence the eddy viscosity and so
the Reynolds stress directly. Thus the ux Richardson number R
f
plays an important role as it dictates
the eect of streamline curvature on the turbulence structure through the amplication and diminution of
the eddy viscosity.
By equating the expressions of eddy viscosity t
t
in both the standard ke model and the curvature modi-
cation to the ke model, it can be shown that
c
l

2/
3
1 R
f
/
P
k
e
R
2
f
4R
f
1
1 R
f

3
The correction leads to a signicant reduction in c
l
around the separation streamline, i.e., in the curved shear
bordering the recirculation zone. For equilibrium turbulence, when the local streamline curvature eect van-
ishes, R
f
equals zero and the value of c
l
becomes equal to the standard value of 0.09 and the model reduces to
the standard ke model.
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the ow eld.
M. Pathak et al. / Mechanics Research Communications 34 (2007) 241248 243
The governing equations are solved using the SIMPLER algorithm (Patankar, 1980) on a nonuniform stag-
gered grid. The grid independence test of the computation is checked with four dierent sets of grids, viz.,
60 40 (60 along the x- and 40 along y-directions), 70 50, 80 60 and 90 70 by comparing a sensitive
parameter turbulent kinetic energy for each case. The grids are non-uniform in both the directions and clus-
tered near the wall and the jet source region. The prole of the turbulent kinetic energy for R = 6 at
y/D = 25.0 using the standard ke model is shown in Fig. 2. It has been observed that the grid renement
in general improves the near eld solution without signicantly altering the far eld solution. The deviation
between the predictions using the four dierent grids decreases as the mesh is rened. The dierence between
the predictions using the grid sizes 80 60 and 90 70 is small. The results that are presented in the subse-
quent sections are for the grid size 80 60. The convection and diusion terms of the governing equations
are discretised using the power-law scheme (Patankar, 1980). The ADI (alternating the direction of line-by-line
iteration) scheme using the tri-diagonal matrix algorithm is used to solve the system of linear algebraic equa-
tions. All the variables (u, v, k, and e) are under-relaxed at each iteration.
The dierent boundary conditions used in the present computations are inlet, outlet and wall. The
boundary conditions at the left edge are the free stream conditions, i.e., u = 0, v = v
a
, k 0:04v
2
a
and
e = k
3/2
/0.06x
max
(Hwang and Chiang, 1995). The top boundary is placed far enough from the jet source
so that undisturbed free stream conditions can be applied there. At the right boundary, normal gradient
of all variables are considered to be zero. The whole bottom boundary excluding the jet discharge is con-
sidered as a solid wall where the boundary conditions are applied using the standard wall functions
(Launder and Spalding, 1974). The universal logarithmic velocity prole is assumed to prevail in the vicinity
of the bottom wall. Turbulent kinetic energy is set to be zero at the bottom wall, and its dissipation rate in
the near wall region is assumed to be inversely proportional to the distance from the wall (Patankar et al.,
1974). At the jet discharge region, the boundary conditions are u = u
j
, v = 0, k
j
0:001u
2
j
and e = k
3/2
/0.5D
(Hwang and Chiang, 1995). Since the velocities at the boundaries are specied, there is no need of speci-
cations of pressure at the boundaries (Patankar, 1980) and hence no boundary values for the pressure are
prescribed.
3. Results and discussion
The computed results of important ow properties are compared with the experimental observations made
by Ramaprian and Haniu (1983); Haniu and Ramaprian (1989). They reported their experimental observa-
tions in sn coordinate system (see Fig. 1) for three dierent values of R, i.e., R = 6, 9 and 10. The upper part
of the curved jet (n/D < 0) faces and mixes with the cross-ow. This half of the jet is referred to as the outer
part and the other half (n/D > 0) is referred to as inner part of the jet.
Jet trajectory is the locus of the local maximum velocity of the jet and it coincides with the centerline of the
jet. The jet trajectory indicates a qualitative representation of the jet ow, such as, the penetration, deection
Fig. 2. Grid sensitivity test.
244 M. Pathak et al. / Mechanics Research Communications 34 (2007) 241248
of the jet and degree of streamline curvature. The comparison of the predicted jet trajectories with the
experimental data is presented in Fig. 3 for the jets with R = 6 and 9. The jet ow is almost unaected by
the cross-ow in the vicinity of discharge as the cross-ow is weak relative to the jet ow, but further down-
stream, the jet gets increasingly deected due to a larger relative momentum of the cross-ow. The predictions
by both turbulence models compare well with the experimental data. It is also observed that higher the value
of R, higher is the depth of penetration of the jet and smaller is its deection. Therefore the jet with the value
of R = 6 experiences higher deection and thus the eect of streamline curvature will be higher in this case
compared to the cases with R = 9.
The normalised s-component proles of the mean velocity u are shown in Fig. 4 for R = 6. It is observed
that the jet is not symmetric about its axis. Due to the eect of edge velocity in the upper part of the jet, the
spread of the jet is obstructed, whereas because of still ambiance, the spreading is relatively larger in the inner
part of the jet. The curvature of the jet produces a strong mixing in the outer part of the jet and relatively
reduced mixing in the inner part. Therefore, the curvature modication model should show large values of
the velocity in the outer part and small values in the inner part. However due to the presence of nite velocity
at the edge of the outer part, the spreading rate is aected, hence a slight reduction of the velocity is observed
in the outer part. The curvature model shows a better result than the standard ke model in the inner part of
the jet, by maintaining a reduction in velocity and more prominently at the edge of the inner portion by show-
ing a negative velocity, thereby accurately predicting a mild recirculation. It is also observed that because of
higher curvature, the improvement in the prediction by curvature modication model is more in case of R = 6
than in the case of R = 9 (the latter case is not plotted here because of space constraints).
The normalised values of the eddy viscosity are shown in Fig. 5 for R = 6. In the experimental data
(Ramaprian and Haniu, 1983), the eddy viscosity was normalised by the velocity and velocity half widths
(b
u1
, b
u2
) and its values were plotted with respect to the normalised distances (n/b
u1
and n/b
u2
). Since it is rather
Fig. 3. Comparison of jet trajectory for R = 6 and 9.
Fig. 4. Comparison of predicted u/u
j
prole for R = 6.
M. Pathak et al. / Mechanics Research Communications 34 (2007) 241248 245
cumbersome to compute the velocity half widths in the predictions, we have rescaled the experimental values
in terms of D and n/D. It may be noted that for rescaling we have used the relation of D, n/D with b
u1
, b
u2
for a
particular section (s/D) as given by Ramaprian and Haniu (1983). It is seen from Fig. 5 that the eddy viscosity
varies signicantly across both regions of the jet. The streamline curvature increases turbulence in the outer
portion of the jet, hence large values of the eddy viscosity are observed in the outer portion of the jet and
appreciably smaller values in the inner portion. The predictions by the curvature modication to the ke
model are better than those by the standard ke model, which shows a nearly linear variation.
The s-component normalised turbulent intensities u
0
/u
j
are compared with experimental values in Fig. 6.
These intensities are calculated from the individual component of the turbulent kinetic energy k assuming
Fig. 5. Comparison of eddy viscosity proles for R = 6.
Fig. 6. Comparison of turbulent uctuation for R = 6.
Fig. 7. Comparison of normalized turbulent shear stress for the jet for R = 6.
246 M. Pathak et al. / Mechanics Research Communications 34 (2007) 241248
isotropic behaviour. The streamline curvature enhances the intensity in the outer part of the jet and this is
over-predicted marginally by the curvature modication model. The nite edge velocity of the free stream
has negligible eect on the uctuating component. The curvature modication improves the prediction in
the inner part of the jet by showing a reduction of uctuation.
The normalised turbulent shear stresses are shown in Figs. 7 and 8, respectively, for R = 6 and 9. Due to the
counter eect of the edge velocity and the streamline curvature, the curvature model does not show signicant
enhancement of the shear stress in the outer part of the jet compared to that by the standard ke model. In the
inner part of the jet, the curvature model shows appreciable reduction of the shear stress and this is consistent
with experimental observations. The standard ke model over-predicts in the inner part of the jet.
4. Conclusions
The eects of the streamline curvature on mean and turbulent ow properties of a turbulent plane jet in
cross-ow have been studied by incorporating the streamline curvature modication in the turbulence model.
The streamline curvature modication to the standard ke model is found to more appropriate than the stan-
dard ke model in predicting ow properties, such as, jet trajectory, mean velocity proles, eddy viscosity.
Acknowledgement
Anupam Dewan acknowledges the nancial supports provided by Department of Science and Technology,
Government of India, New Delhi, through the Fast Track sponsored project No. HR/OY/E-05/99 (SR/FTP/
E-05/99).
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