To Örebro University

Optimal control of inlet jet flows is of broad interest for enhanced mixing in ventilated rooms. The general approach in mechanical ventilation is forced convection by means of a constant flow rate supply. However, this type of ventilation may cause several problems such as draught and appearance of stagnation zones, which reduces the ventilation efficiency. A potential way to improve the ventilation quality is to apply a pulsating inflow, which has been hypothesised to reduce the stagnation zones due to enhanced mixing. The present study aims at testing this hypothesis, experimentally, in a small-scale two-dimensional water model using Particle Image Velocimetry with an in-house vortex detection program. We are able to show that for an increase in pulsation frequency or alternatively in the flow rate the stagnation zones are reduced in size and the distribution of vortices becomes more homogeneous over the considered domain. The number of vortices (all scales) increases by a factor of four and the swirl-strength by about 50% simply by turning on the inflow pulsation. Furthermore, the vortices are well balanced in terms of their rotational direction, which is validated by the symmetric Probability Density Functions of vortex circulation (Γ) around Γ= 0. There are two dominating vortex length scales in the flow, namely 0.6 and 0.8 inlet diameters and the spectrum of vortex diameters become broader by turning on the inflow pulsation. We conclude that the positive effect for enhanced mixing by increasing the flow rate can equally be accomplished by applying a pulsating inflow.

Optimal control of inlet jet flows is of wide applicative interest in order to enhance mixing and reduce stagnation in a ventilated room. The general approach in mechanical ventilation is to use a constant flow rate forced convection system providing the ventilation air. This type of ventilation may cause several problems such as draught, stagnation at certain occupied locations, and subsequently low ventilation efficiencies. An alternative to increase the ventilation quality that has been of interest in this study is to introduce flow variations, which is considered as a potential to reduce stagnation and increase efficiency of the ventilation. The study was conducted as a model experiment in a small-scale, two-dimensional (2-D) room model with dimensions 30200.9 cm3 with water as operating fluid. The size of the model made it possible to investigate the 2-D velocity vector field within the entire room using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) method and further consequent dynamical and statistical analyses have been done from the resulted PIV vector fields. The comparison between cases of constant flow rate and flow variations have been conducted for the cases of two set of base flow rates and for each one, the cases of constant flow rate and flow variations with frequencies of 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5 Hz, is considered. In this investigation we show that the calm region, with a large stagnation zone, without pulsating inflow condition becomes more active in the sense that the stagnation points are moved and that the small-scale structures are grown for increasing pulsation frequency.