COMPUTATIONAL PAPER ON AXISYMMETRIC JET (Analysis using openFOAM)

INTRODUCTION
The axisymmetric jet belongs to a class of turbulent flows called free shear flows. In jets, the cross-stream variation of mean velocity is maximum along the center-line and the value decreases as we move away from the center line. The mean velocity along x-axis plays relatively less role in the jet and mixing layers contrary to wakes where mean velocity along the x-direction is conspicuous. Hence, in jet flows U=O(Us), where Us is the cross-stream variation of mean velocity from center line. By doing order of magnitude analysis as explained H. Tennekes and J. L. Lumley in [1], we are left with pressure term equating the square of velocity fluctuation in the y-direction and also we infer from the stream-wise momentum equation that the x momentum removed by the cross-stream velocity fluctuation v is replaced by x-momentum and y-momentum carried by the mean flow.

=0

The variation of velocity as well as the integral scale of the turbulence can be estimated by the power law. For axisymmetric jet

Us~ 1 l~ 1
This can be used as the test for the simulation and check if the velocity profile is as predicted by the power law relation.

ANALYSIS OF AXISYMMETRIC JET

The analysis of the axisymmetric jet was carried using openFOAM. The procedure followed is explained as follows: Design and meshing of flow domain using GAMBIT. (blockMesh file was not created) Import the geometry to openFOAM. Initial conditions and editing controlDict. Extracting the results.

DESIGN AND MESHING USING GAMBIT DEFINING THE DOMAIN

The domain was 150 cross 70 cm long with the inlet diameter of 1 am. The condition of axissymmetry is utilized and only one half of the whole geometry is created. The inlet length is 10 cm after which the jet is allowed to expand freely. It is usually rule of thumb to have x/d of more than 100 for the domain along the x-axis.

MESHING
The edge mesh was created first. The edge facing the inlet was split at (150, 1) to create a uniform mesh for the edge. This is required for creating a uniform mesh for the faces also. The mesh is fine near the inlet and gradually mesh widens as the distance from the center-line increases. As the problem is related to turbulent structure, the overall mesh is fine everywhere. But relatively, the mesh near the inlet and near the center-line is finer.

DEFINING THE BOUNDARY CONDITION

The boundary conditions are: INLET-inlet boundary condition with velocity of 22.5 m/s OUTLET-Pressure outlet. WALL along the inlet and the side adjacent to inlet AXIS-the edge along the x-axis is given a axis boundary condition.

IMPORT THE GEOMETRY TO openFOAM

The geometry created in openFOAM is stored in the folder named CONSTANT. Here the blockMesh file is not created but by typing the command-

fluentMeshToFoam Jetflow.msh the mesh file is created and translated to be used in openFOAM. The mesh is checked by viewing the file in paraview.

INITIAL CONDITIONS AND EDITING THE controlDict

The initial conditions in openFOAM are stored in the file 0 (zero). The initial condition given in the 0 condition are k, epsilon, U (velocity), R(Reynoldss stress), nut, nutilda . The pitzDialy file was used for the reference values.

Editing the controlDict: The iterations are controlled by the controlDict file in the SYSTEM folder. The start time is given as 0 in reference to the initial conditions are given. The endTime is 1000 as it is pisoFoam solver and only the residuals can give the convergence of the solution. The write interval is given as 10,000 as the file adds up to the memory of the system and only essential things must be commanded to be written in file as we can extract once the iteration convergence.

Calculation of k-epsilon: The model chosen for the analysis is k- model. The value of k and is determined as follows:In the Standard k- model, the fluctuating velocity is assumed to be 5% of the inlet velocity.

=1.125m/s

With this fluctuating velocity, the value of K is determined as

K=

ux- fluctuating velocity

The value of K is determined to be 1.8984 The value of is calculated as follows

=
The value is calculated to be 429.9797.

As the turbulence is unsteady flow field problem PISO algorithm was chosen for iteration Variable K u d tolerance Viscous model Solver Value 1.8984 m/s 429.9797 m3/s 22.5 m/s 1 cm 1e-5 K- PISO algorithm

Iteration is ru by typing pisoFOAM in the terminal from the directory in which the 0, constant and system files are stored. For the present case the mesh file is also stored in the same directory.

EXTRACTING RESULTS-POST PROCESSING

The iterations were run for 1150 as endTime with a time step of 0.005 to meet the stability criteria in terms of courant number. The mesh was examined at the beginning in paraview software. The checkMesh command was used to check the correctness of mesh. After the iterations, the paraview was used to find the variation in velocity as a whole and variation in velocity components. The slice was used to extract the results along the axis and at x/d=30. The data was plotted as well as exported at .csv file format similar to excel sheet. Individual variations of k, epsilon, and nut values were given as data file against the coordinates of domain. sampleDict file was also created to analyze the sample sets

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The solver used was unsteady solver-pisoFoam. Hence residuals were monitored for the convergence of the result. Using the foamJob pisoFoam the log files were created. Once the values appeared to converge, the velocity plot was made and compared with the power law relation, which states that velocity is inversely proportional to distance along x-axis. The plot did agree with the power law relation. Turbulent Kinetic energy increased during the initial few lengths along the axis and later it decreased. The radial velocity plotted along the axis showed no fluctuation, which can be used as check for proper convergence of the result. The value of axial velocity at x/d=30 decreased along y-axis which is expected as for axisymmetric jet the centerline velocity is maximum. The cross-stream variation of axial velocity was seen from the plot of axial velocity.

CONCLUSION
The mesh was not created in openFOAM using blockMesh but mesh generated using GAMBIT passed the checkMesh with no errors. For some reason the domain length created in GAMBIT didnt match with the mesh formed out of openFOAM. The pisoFOAM solver gave errors when the time step was reduced beyond order of 10e-3. The pressure outlet boundary condition on the upper surface and outlet was given on the trial-and-error basis and iterations were carried out in FLUENT. This mesh file was used because the results obtained from FLUENT did match the trend of the axisymmetric jet. Future works will include meshing the geometry entirely in openFOAM and using simpleFOAM solver to analyze the axisymmetric jets.