On the vorticity characteristics of lobe-forced mixer at different configurations

Lobe-forced mixer is one typical example of the passive flow controllers owing to its corrugated trailing edge. Besides the spanwise Kelvin-Helmholtz vortex shedding, streamwise vortices are also generated within its mixing layer. The geometrical configuration of the lobe significantly affects these two types of vortices, which in turn affects the mixing performance of the mixer. In the present investigation, characteristics of mixers with five different configurations were examined and evaluated for two velocity ratios (r = 1, 0.4). The mixers have only one lobe in order to eliminate any possible interactions between neighboring vortices generated by the adjacent lobes. Hot-wire anemometer was used to examine the Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices via the spectrum analysis while laser Doppler anemometer was employed to examine the streamwise vortices. It was found that there were two main frequencies for the Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices in the wake of the mixer; and the Strouhal numbers approached their respective maximum values at high Reynolds number. The rectangular mixer had similar mixing performance with the semicircular one; and both of them were better than the triangular mixer. The scalloping modification enhanced mixing by generating additional streamwise vortices while the scarfing modification could not improve the mixing performance. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.