Planar Pressure Field Determination in the Initial Merging Zone of an Annular Swirling Jet Based on Stereo-PIV Measurements

In this paper the static pressure field of an annular swirling jet is measured indirectly using stereo-PIV measurements. The pressure field is obtained from numerically solving the Poisson equation, taken into account the axisymmetry of the flow. At the boundaries no assumptions are made and the exact boundary conditions are applied. Since all source terms can be measured using stereo-PIV and the boundary conditions are exact, no assumptions other than axisymmetry had to be made in the calculation of the pressure field. The advantage of this method of indirect pressure measurement is its high spatial resolution compared to the traditional pitot probes. Moreover this method is non-intrusive while the insertion of a pitot tube disturbs the flow. It is shown that the annular swirling flow can be divided into three regimes: a low, an intermediate and a high swirling regime. The pressure field of the low swirling regime is the superposition of the pressure field of the non-swirling jet and a swirl induced pressure field due to the centrifugal forces of the rotating jet. As the swirl increases, the swirl induced pressure field becomes dominant and for the intermediate and high swirling regimes, the simple radial equilibrium equation holds.