A study of gaseous transverse injection and mixing process in a simulated engine intake port

The flow field resulting from injecting a gas jet into a crossflow confined in a narrow square duct has been studied under steady regime using both experimental and numerical methods. A transparent duct is built, intended to simulate the intake port of an internal combustion engine fueled by gaseous mixture, and the jet is issued from a round nozzle. Schlieren imaging, laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) have been applied for the experimental study as well as hot wire anemometry (HWA). The schlieren images show that the relative small size of the duct would confine the development of the transverse jet, and the interaction among jet and sidewalls strongly influences the mixing process between jet and crossflow. The mean velocity and turbulence fields have been studied in detail through LDV and HWA measurements, at both the center plane and several cross sections. Several important phenomena have been identified with these techniques and analyzed in depth, including the well-known counter rotating vortex pair (CVP), which starts to appear at the jet exit section and persists far downstream contributing to enhancing mixing process. In addition, jets of different gases have been investigated with various injection orientations, aiming to fully understand the behaviors of transverse jet and the mixing process in the simulated intake port under wide practical conditions. Particularly, the jet injection against crossflow has been found favorable in this study. The results show that the injection direction can influence the flow field remarkably, while the effect of injected gas is negligible, when the appropriate scaling is applied. Moreover, a numerical study has been performed as well with FLUENT, which shows well agreement with the experimental results acquired. The numerical results could present the concentration field, and consequently directly show the mixing process between the jet and the crossflow. Finally, a detailed description of the flow field inside a model intake port of an engine fueled with gaseous fuel is provided by the presented study and can be the basis for future comparison with computations.