Velocity And Concentration Measurements Of Supersonic Underexpanded Jets
Authors: Sanapo Carlo , Ruiz Sara Gonzalez , Fouchier Charline , Courtiaud Sebastien , Laboureur Delphine 
Published: July 2024

The release of high-speed gas jets due to a tank leakage can pose a substantial safety hazard, as it can give rise to flammable, explosive, or toxic mixtures. Hence, understanding jet dispersion in real-world conditions is crucial for designing effective safety measures. Existing targeted or traceable studies provide velocity field data, but limitations in source-driven-pressures, nozzle geometries, or cross-flow conditions restrict their representativeness under real conditions. Indeed, an exhaustive experimental dataset for supersonic underexpanded gas jet dispersion under the influence of an Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) is currently lacking. As part of a collaboration with the CEA, the von Karman Institute is continuing research efforts towards the development of high quality nonintrusive, optical measurement techniques for the characterization of the velocity and the concentration of a supersonic underexpanded jet submitted to different cross-flow conditions. The research explicitly targets measurements far from the release point within the self-similar region. Such measurements have already been tried on a supersonic jet without cross-flow and with a uniform velocity low-speed cross-flow [2], but never under the influence of an ABL. By filling this gap, the objective of the present work is to further improve the dispersion characterization by combining different techniques, such as Laser Mie Scattering and Light Extinction Spectroscopy (LES). To evaluate the dispersion within the self-similar region up to x/D ≈ 100, a significant FOV 1 is required. Therefore, Large-Scale Particle Image Velocimetry (LS-PIV) has been adapted and successfully applied to measure the velocity field. Prominent results have been obtained and comparable to standard PIV measurements. The pronounced variation in velocity magnitude observed while transitioning from the potential core to the self-similar region requires collecting multiple datasets to cover the broad spectrum of velocities comprehensively. A Mie scattering theory-based technique has been used to retrieve a relative concentration field. It is a non-intrusive technique that operates on the same experimental images produced by the LS-PIV campaign, assuming that light scattered by particles within a specific volume is proportional to the number of particles within this volume. The algorithm for concentration retrieval was adapted from and consequently improved for the present case. Discrepancies in the scaled concentration evolution among different nozzle diameters highlighted the necessity for refining the technique. This emphasizes accurately determining the reference concentration in a region free from intricate phenomena such as multiple scattering. The absolute and independent concentration measurement is done via Light Extinction Spectroscopy (LES). The LES technique measures the transmittance spectrum T of a collimated light beam passing through the particle-laden flow. This method has successfully been applied to several types of flows with similar seeding particles and concentration quantities (e.g. PSD 2 ). The extrapolation of absolute concentration parameters relies on the regularized solution of an ill-conditioned inverse problem. This solution is derived using the transmittance recorded during the test as the primary input parameter. The system to solve exhibits high sensitivity to small perturbations, making it challenging to employ numerical techniques confidently. Due to the substantial impact of minor perturbations in initial conditions on the system solution, a meticulous adaptation of the technique to the demands of compressible flows is necessary and still ongoing. The setup consists of a Deuterium-Tungsten Halogen UV-NIR light source emitting a divergent beam of light towards a 90◦ off-axis parabolic mirror, which collimates and deviates it into a beam to the jet. After passing through the jet, the resulting attenuated light beam goes into a collector mirror, redirecting it into a composite grating spectrometer UV-NIR with a 200 − 1100 nm wavelength range with 0.5 nm optical resolution. The results will examine the dispersion pattern and feature in terms of velocity and concentration of a supersonic underexpanded jet produced by an upstream tank with total pressure ranging from 5 to 9 bar without cross-flows. The latter will provide a foundation for successive studies on supersonic underexpanded jets subjected to an ABL.