Experimental Study of Flow Structure Characteristics for a T-Junction Duct With Horizontal Vanes

Abstract

An experimental study is carried out to investigate the flow characteristics of the trailing edge of the horizontal vanes mounted at the branch entrance of a T-junction duct by means of particle image velocimetry (PIV). The measured region starts at the trailing edge of the vanes and ends at about 1.26D (hydraulic diameter) length at downstream of the branch duct. The velocity field is obtained across a number of vertical height planes (z/D = ±0.2, 0, and −0.4) under different flow conditions (cross velocity: uc = 30–50 m/s; velocity ratio: R = 0.08–0.18). The instantaneous flow results show that Kelvin-like vortices with counter-clockwise direction appear at the heights of z/D = ±0.2 and 0, and that a separation bubble is formed at the upper wall of the branch duct at the same heights, respectively. As for near wall z/D = −0.4, one large vortex is observed at the downstream channel, but the separation bubble vanishes as the branching Reynolds number is increased to 3.6 × 104. The time-average flow field is slightly different from that of instantaneous flow field. In addition, the vorticity distribution indicates that two significant vortex sheet layers with negative and positive values are found at the high velocity ratio or high cross velocity, and the normalized vorticity strength increases with increasing velocity ratio and decreases with increasing cross velocity except at z/D = −0.4.