Liquid Jet Impingement on a Free Liquid Surface: PIV Study of the Turbulent Bubbly Two-Phase Flow

The turbulent two-phase flow arising from the normal impingement of a round free-surface water jet on a horizontal air-water interface was experimentally studied. Due to the weakly viscous nature of the flow system under consideration, external perturbations or small variations in jet inflow conditions can lead to drastically different flow field characteristics under seemingly similar test conditions. In the current study, a fully developed turbulent jet, exiting a long pipe, ensured properly characterized inflow conditions. The study considered two jet inflow conditions; one entrained air and created a bubbly two-phase flow field while the other did not. Particle image velocimetry (PIV) was used to characterize the flow field beneath the interface, with and without air entrainment, for various nozzle-to-interface separation distances. Turbulent velocity fields of the continuous-phase and dispersed-phase were simultaneously measured in the developing flow region and presented using Reynolds decomposition into mean and fluctuating components. The mean and RMS velocities of the two-phase flow field were compared with velocity measurements obtained under single-phase conditions.