An active mixing enhancement technique in supersonic ejectors using pulsed streamwise injections

Abstract

The current study numerically investigates an active mixing enhancement technique for a supersonic ejector with a constant area mixing chamber operating under the critical regime. Streamwise control jet injections are alternatively pulsed at the top and bottom sides of the mixing chamber entrance. The induced oscillation of the primary jet enhances the bulk mixing between the primary and secondary streams. The secondary stream penetrates the primary core flow much upstream with the control strategy compared to the no-injection case, improving the onset of mixing by 65.36%. A higher spread of the primary jet along the mixing chamber height is observed with the control strategy indicating an enhanced mixing between the two streams. Dynamic mode decomposition analysis of the fluctuations of the velocity magnitude revealed that the dominant dynamic structures are determined by the pulsation frequency and a dominant flapping mode can be observed. The frequency spectrum of the primary jet oscillation revealed that the dominant frequency of oscillation is dictated by the pulsation frequency of the injection. With an increase in the control jet pulsation frequency, the amplitude of primary jet oscillation reduces near the entrance region of the mixing chamber, whereas the amplitude of oscillation far downstream reaches nearly the same value for all the cases. The power spectral analysis of the unsteady pressure fluctuations along the mixing chamber wall revealed that the wall pressure oscillations are contributed by the control jet pulsation frequency as well as the shock wave reflections produced by the supersonic jet–jet interaction within the mixing chamber.