Experimental Investigation of Flow Field Structure in Mixing Tee

Abstract

T-junction is one of the familiar components in the cooling system of power plants with enormous capability of high-cycle thermal fatigue. This research investigates the structure and mixing mechanism of turbulent flow in a T-junction area with a 90 deg bend upstream. According to the wide distribution of turbulent jets in the T-junction, a re-attached jet was selected previously as the best representative condition with the highest velocity fluctuation and the most complex structure. For considering the mixing mechanism of re-attached jet, T-junction is subdivided into few lateral and longitudinal sections, and each section is visualized separately by particle image velocimetry technique. Corresponding to the experimental data, the branch flow acts as a finite turbulent jet, develops the alternative type of eddies, and causes the high velocity fluctuation near the main pipe wall. Three regions are mainly subject to maximum velocity fluctuation: the region close to the jet boundaries (fluctuation mostly is caused by Kelvin–Helmholtz instability), the region above the jet and along the main flow (fluctuation mostly is caused by Karman vortex), and the re-attached area (fluctuation mostly is caused by changing the pressure gradient in the wake area above the jet). Finally, the re-attached area (near the downstream of wake area above the jet) is introduced as a region with strongest possibility to high-cycle thermal fatigue with most effective velocity fluctuation on the main pipe wall above the branch nozzle.