DNS of an oblique jet in a particle-laden crossflow: study of solid phase preferential concentration and particle-wall interaction

A DNS study of the interaction between an oblique laminar jet and a particle-laden crossflow is presented. The delivery tube is included in the simulation and jet in crossflow blowing ratio is set equal to 0.5, typical for gas turbine film cooling applications. The solid phase is polydisperse and it is simulated by adopting a Lagrangian two-way coupling point-particle approach. Wall-particle interaction is also taken into account. The fluid flow in the jet outflow region was found to be dominated by a strong vorticity field and by hairpin shaped vortices that are shed periodically in the crossflow. Hairpin legs are associated to a counter-rotating vortex pair that persist in the far-field of the jet. The spatial distribution of the dispersed phase is strongly influenced by these large-scale coherent structures. A three-dimensional Voronoi analysis demonstrated a particle preferential concentration induced by hairpin vortices downstream from the jet exit. Volume fractions curves are presented as a function of the spanwise direction for different transversal sections of the crossflow region. A void particle region is induced by vortices in the central near-wall zone downstream of the jet exit. Particles tend to accumulate along two symmetric regions placed on the lateral side of the structures generated by the jet injection. By an analysis of particle impacts on the wall it was observed that particles characterized by lower values of the St number, whose response time is comparable with the characteristic time of the hairpin vortices, tend to impact on the wall on two symmetric side of the jet exit in the proximity of hairpin legs. This demonstrated that the generated large-scale coherent structures play a major role in the not homogeneous dispersion of the solid phase.