Flow Visualization of Axisymmetric Impinging Jet on a Concave Surface

Flow visualization was performed to give a physical insight with vortical structures of an axisymmetric impinging jet on a concave surface. High-speed imaging was employed to get clear images with a laser light sheet illumination. An axisymmetric jet is issued into quasi-ambient air through a straight pipe nozzle with fully-developed velocity profile. A regular vertical pattern of an axisymmetric jet was observed with different flow entrainment rate. While an impinged jet turns to convert a wall jet along a concave surface, the flow interaction between the large-scale toroidal vortex and the concave surface was observed in the transition between the stagnation and wall jet zone. The ring-shaped wall eddies induced from a pair of toroidal vortices were also appeared to diverge into the radial direction along the concave surface. As the jet Reynolds number increases, small-scale vortices can be developed to a large-scale toroidal vortex. The location in which a large-scale toroidal vortex strikes is generally identical to the location where the secondary peak in heat transfer occurs. The frequency of large scale toroidal vortex on concave surface is found to be nearly similar as that of wall jet on flat surface. As the nozzle-to-target spacing (L/D) increases, it becomes shorter due to the loss of jet momentum. The flow behavior of axisymmetric impinging jet on a concave surface can be helpful to design the internal passage cooling for gas turbine blade.