Experimental Study of the Stability of a High-Speed Gas Jet Under the Influence of Liquid Cross-Flow

This paper reports on the interfacial character and deflection of a high-speed gas jet transverse to an aqueous cross-flow as a function of cross-flow speed and gas jet Mach number. Several gas exit velocities were tested including subsonic cases up to supersonic cases at cross-flow velocities from 0.3 m/s to 0.7 m/s. For the subsonic cases, it was found that the stability and resistance of the gas jet to deflect in the presence of cross-flow were increased with the jet Mach number. However, the Mach 1.6 jet was more stable than the Mach 1.9 jet, suggesting that there exists upper and lower bounds for jet stability which are Mach number dependent. Unstable gas jets were shown to pinch-off, meaning the interface of the gas jet in a plane parallel to the ejector exit collapsed to almost a point and an independent bubble rose to the free surface. The stagnation side gas/liquid interfaces were analyzed using the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) method to better understand the fundamental mode shapes contained in the interface waveforms. It was found that the subsonic jets shared many of the same characteristics in their first, second, and third mode shapes. The supersonic jets differed from the subsonic mode shapes. Interestingly, the mode shapes for the subsonic cases compared well to those of a beam in transverse vibration with sliding-free boundary conditions. The supersonic cases compared relatively well to pinned-free boundary conditions, owing to the more columnar nature of the gas jet as it exited the ejector.