A study of scalar mixing in gas phase turbulent jets using high repetition rate imaging

In this dissertation, high-speed mixture fraction (a conserved flow scalar) and velocity measurements were performed to understand the linked spatio-temporal dynamics of scalar mixing processes in gas-phase turbulent jets. The current research focused on four over-arching topics: (i) design and construction of the high energy pulse burst laser system (HEPBLS), (ii) experimental verification of statistical convergence theory for time-series measurements in turbulent flows and the development of a new “multi-burst data processing methodology for “short duration time-series measurements, (iii) development and application of high-speed (10 kHz) two-dimensional mixture fraction imaging for spatio-temporal statistical analysis of scalar mixing, and (iv) development and application of simultaneous high-speed velocity and mixture fraction measurements to understand the space-time coupling between velocity and scalar fluctuations. The high-speed measurements presented in this dissertation were facilitated through the design and construction of a new high-energy pulse burst laser system (HEPBLS). The design target of the HEPBLS was ultra-high pulse energy output at high repetition rates for turbulence and combustion imaging diagnostics. Several modifications were made to the original pulse burst concept leading to ultra-high laser pulse energies (> 1 Joule/pulse at 532 nm and 10 kHz) over long burst durations (> 20 ms). The high laser pulse energies enable high-fidelity two-dimensional mixture fraction measurements at 10’s of kHz using planar Rayleigh scattering and two-line mixture fraction imaging using spontaneous Raman scattering. While the primary imaging ii diagnostics used the second-harmonic (532 nm) output from the HEPBLS, it is noted that high-energy ultra-violet (266, 355 nm) output was demonstrated as well. The result is a flexible system capable of facilitating a wide range of laser diagnostic techniques at 10’s of kHz that have not been available previously. Convergence of turbulent flow statistics from finite-record length time-series measurements was examined via theory and experiment. Analytical solutions of the convergence of statistical moments and correlation functions were developed and experimentally verified for the first time, providing a practitioner a method for accurately estimating the uncertainty of a measurement for a given record length. In addition, a new “multiburst data processing method was proposed (and experimentally validated) based on combined ensemble and time-series statistics specifically targeted for shorter-duration time-series measurements characteristic of data acquired using the HEPBLS. A subtle, but important, result was that the primary factor governing statistical convergence was the total amount of data and not the exact manner (i.e., record length or number of individual time series) in which it was collected. In this manner, a large number of short-duration time-series measurements can be acquired and achieve high statistical convergence. Scalar mixing dynamics was first examined using high-speed (10 kHz) planar Rayleigh scattering imaging in a series of turbulent propane jets. In this manner, quantitative two-dimensional measurements of the mixture fraction field were collected for jets with Reynolds numbers of Red = 10 000, 20 000, and 30 000 with high signal-to-noise ratios (60 < SNR < 200). The integral length and time scales were calculated via correlation functions across the full range of Reynolds numbers and as function of axial and radial position. The radial dependence of the integral scales was shown to be strongly affected by the increasing intermittency of the turbulence with