Hydrodynamics During the Transient Evolution of Open Jet Flows from/to Wall Attached Jets

Swirl stabilized flows are the most widely deployed technology used to stabilize gas turbine combustion systems. However, there are some coherent structures that appear in these flows close to the nozzle whose occurrence and stability are still poorly understood during transition. The external recirculation zone and the Precessing Vortex Core to/from the Coanda effect are some of them. Thus, in this paper the transition of an Open Jet Flow-Medium Swirl flow pattern to/from a Coanda jet flow is studied using various geometries at a fixed Swirl number. Phase Locked Stereo Particle Image Velocimetry and High Speed Photography experiments were conducted to determine fundamental characteristics of the phenomenon. It was observed that the coherent structures in the field experience a complete annihilation during transition, with no dependency between the structures formed in each of the flow states. Moreover, transition occurs at a particular normalized step size whilst some acoustic shifts in the frequencies of the system were noticed, a phenomenon related to the strength of the vortical structures and vortices convection. It is concluded that a transient, precessing, Coanda Vortex Breakdown is formed, changing flow dynamics. The structure progresses to a less coherent Trapped Vortex between the two states. During the phenomenon there are different interactions between structures such as the Central Recirculation Zone, the High Momentum Flow Region and the Precessing Vortex Core that were also documented.