Effect of a parallel free surface upon a submerged shallow synthetic jet

Abstract

The interaction of a submerged shallow synthetic jet with a parallel free surface has gathered substantial interest, owing to its relevance to the operation of marine vehicles viz. ships that move close to the water surface. However, despite exhaustive research on the perturbation on a free surface, very few studies have experimentally investigated the effect of unconfined water surface height on the evolution and propagation of a submerged synthetic jet. This study experimentally investigates a synthetic jet submerged in a quiescent flow at shallow depths ejecting parallel to the free surface, through qualitative analysis and quantitative measurements. The qualitative study includes the visualization of the flow using plane laser induced fluorescence (PLIF) technique, whereas the velocity measurements are carried out by a five-beam laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) probe. The primary objective of these analysis and measurements is to gain a physical insight into the characteristics of vortex ring in a synthetic jet ejected from a fixed orifice at different water depths and at varying Reynolds number. Our studies indicate that the behavior of the vortex rings drastically changes as the depth of the jet crosses a certain threshold. Although no significant change in the path of synthetic jet is observed beyond a threshold depth in our experiments, the jet trajectory shows an interesting dependence on the Reynolds number based on circulation for shallow water depths. It has been found that at the shallow depths, the vortex ring drifts upwards and interacts with the free surface at lower Reynolds number, whereas for larger Reynolds number, the vortex ring rebounds near the free surface and moves downward. Based on our observations, it can be concluded that the phenomenon of upward/downward flection of vortex rings depends both upon its circulation and ejection depth.