Mixing in a supersonic COIL laser: influence of trip jets

摘要

We present an experimental study of a supersonic nozzle with supersonic iodine injection. This nozzle simulates Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) flow conditions with non-reacting, cold flows. During the experiments, we used a laser sheet near 565 nm to excite fluorescence in iodine, which we imaged with an intensified and gated CCD camera. We captured streamwise and semi-spanwise (oblique-view) images, with fluorescence revealing the material injected into the flow. We identified the flow structures in the images, and produced quantitative characterizations of the flow morphology and of the mixing between the primary and injected flow. We considered four injection scenarios. The first scenario includes a single injector positioned downstream of the nozzle throat. To enhance the mixing between the flows, trip jets are placed in the wake of the single jet. The sonic trip jets, significantly smaller than the primary supersonic iodine jet, are intended to destabilize the counter-rotating vortex pair (CRVP) of the primary jet. We compare three different trip jet configurations for their ability to enhance mixing between the oxygen and iodine flows.