Dual-plane PIV investigation of acoustically excited jets in a swirl nozzle

© Author(s) 2016.A novel dual-plane dye laser particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique used to analyze helicity and energy dissipation in an unexcited turbulent swirling jet of pressurized cold air has established that regions within the flow field of the jet exhibiting high helicity are correlated regions of high turbulent kinetic energy dissipation. This PIV configuration provides estimates of all components of the velocity gradient tensor, facilitating calculation of the helicity from the vorticity components. Application of this novel dual-plane PIV technique is extended in this study to investigate helical structures in a turbulent swirling jet where the underlying shear flow is subjected to external acoustic sinusoidal forcing in a plane perpendicular to the central axis of the jet. It was found that acoustic excitation had a significant effect on the mean velocity profile parallel to the direction of the jet. The horizontal forcing resulted in the generation of vorticity that was skewed with a pitch that favored a distribution of angles around 90° with respect to the velocity vector. The distribution of the time-averaged helicity angle indicated organized helical activity, but such activity is not dominated by large-scale coherent structures of maximal helicity.