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The secondary flow in a low aspect ratio incompressible turbulent bounded jet is described in terms of a near, middle, and far field in which the secondary motion is initiated, developed, and decayed, respectively. The initiation of the secondary flow is explained by the distortion of the planar vortex loops which bound the jet at the exit plane. In the region away from the bounding plates, the vortex loop distortion is similar to that found in rectangular free jets; however, the bounding plates cause an additional production of streamwise vorticity near the plates which has no counterpart in the free jet flow. Downstream of the jet core region, a large-scale secondary flow develops from this vorticity. Farther downstream the secondary flow decays; the resultant flow may be characterized as a combination of a plane jet and boundary layer flows. This explanation is supported by the vorticity and velocity data of this investigation. Velocity measurements of this study are sufficiently comprehensive to allow formulation and evaluation of several quantitative measures of the secondary flow strength. The average (over a transverse plane) momentum flux thickness, and the far field behavior show the secondary flow to be dynamically passive. Properly nondimensionalized transverse velocity profiles exhibit characteristic distortions from a basically “self-similar” shape from which the center of the secondary flow rotation can be determined. Integrals of the velocity data allow the inference of mass transport across planes parallel to the bounding plates.

This paper summarizes NASA-supported experimental and computational results on the mixing of a row of jets with a confined subsonic crossflow in a cylindrical duct. The studies from which these results were excerpted investigated flow and geometric variations typical of the complex three-dimensional flowfield in the combustion chambers in gas turbine engines. The principal observations were that the momentum-flux ratio and the number of orifices were significant variables. Jet penetration was critical, and jet penetration decreased as either the number of orifices increased or the momentum-flux ratio decreased. It also appeared that jet penetration remained similar with variations in orifice size, shape, spacing, and momentum-flux ratio when the number of orifices was proportional to the square root of the momentum-flux ratio. In the cylindrical geometry, planar variances are very sensitive to events in the near-wall region, so planar averages must be considered in context with the distributions. The mass-flow ratios and orifices investigated were often very large (mass-flow ratio >1 and ratio of orifice area-to-mainstream cross-sectional area up to 0.5), and the axial planes of interest were sometimes near the orifice trailing edge. Three-dimensional flow was a key part of efficient mixing and was observed for all configurations. The results shown also seem to indicate that nonreacting dimensionless scalar profiles can emulate the reacting flow equivalence ratio distribution reasonably well. The results cited suggest that further study may not necessarily lead to a universal “rule of thumb” for mixer design for lowest emissions, because optimization will likely require an assessment for a specific application.