Jet mixing in a slot

Jet mixing inside a slot has the potential to be applied for cooling in various components in gas turbines. An experimental program was conducted to focus on investigating the flow mixing behavior inside the slots. Various parameters including orientation angle, inclination angle, slot width, effect of primary flow and slot depth were systematically examined. An array of seven jets with a jet-to-jet spacing of five diameters and velocity ratio of unity was used in the experiment. The results indicated that the flow distribution at the slot exit becomes more uniform as the orientation angle was increased from 0° to 60°. Wider slot width brought about high non-uniformity and was clearly undesirable. The optimum slot depth was found to range from 2 to 2.8 times the jet diameter. The flow field was the most uniform where the shear layers of the two adjacent jets met. Regions of low velocity and high pressure caused non-uniform velocity distribution downstream where the jets met, so deeper slots do not necessarily render better uniformity. When the orientation angle increased from 0 to 30° and 60°, the jets bent toward the wall in the inclined direction caused by the Coanda effect. The presence of the primary flow forced the jet to spread faster in the lateral direction and caused some non-uniform flow pockets at the slot exit. The compound angle configuration (60° jet orientation and 30° slot inclination angles) was discovered as the best choice.