Influence of inertial particles on the evolution of scalar flow fields in a high-Sc turbulent jet

Experiments of a particle-laden turbulent axisymmetric jet were performed in water to understand the influence of inertial particles on the concentration fields in a high Schmidt number, Sc, mixing environment. Experimental measurements were made using particle-image velocimetry (PIV) and high-resolution planar-LIF (pLIF) to obtain velocity and mixture fraction fields of a passive scalar. Highly inertial Tungsten Carbide Microspheres (SG = 9.5) of nominal diameter of 200μm dispersed in water were injected with a mass loading in the range of 1-5%. The presence of particles causes two-way coupled interactions between the two phases i.e., additional momentum flux from the inertial particles to the flow field at small scales. Changes to the macroscopic jet behavior due to the presence of particles, and statistical descriptions of the particle distribution, slip velocity and particle-Reynolds number, Re_p are presented for jet Reynolds numbers, Re_j up to 10000 in the self-similar regime. Conditional fields of turbulent kinetic energy and the scalar variance in the neighborhood of particles are discussed to highlight the influence of particle-induced local perturbations on the scalar dissipation.