Experimental and numerical investigations of multiphase jets

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Sediment-laden and bubbly jets can be found in many engineering applications. Air injection into ambient water (i.e., bubbly jets) has been commonly used to enhance mixing and aeration in lakes and rivers, wastewater treatment, heat exchanger and industrial reactors. Sand-laden jets (i.e., slurry jets) can be found in mining operations, hydro-transport, dredging material disposal, and discharge of industrial and domestic wastewater. Understanding the dynamic interactions of air bubbles or sand particles with the ambient water are important for proper design and optimizing the engineering systems including oxygen diffusers and ocean outfalls. *Extensive experimental investigations on bubbly jets have been carried out to measure the variations of bubble parameters such as bubble size, specific interfacial area, bubble velocity and ambient water structure. Early investigations of bubbly jets have shown that the mixing performance of bubbly jets is greatly influenced by the bubble size. Slurry jets have also many industrial and engineering applications, such as, slurry transport, marine bed capping, mining operations, dredging material disposal, and discharge of industrial and domestic wastewater. Understanding the dynamic interactions of the sediment particles and its ambient are important for proper design and optimizing those engineering systems. Depending upon the flow configurations, sediments can be transported through pipelines/channels or can be passed through a nozzle to form a slurry jet. Dynamic interactions of the sand particles and its ambient are also correlated with the physical characteristics of sediments such as sediment size, shape, density and concentration. *This program attempts to understand the underlying mechanisms between different phases (i.e., solid, liquid and gas phases) and tries to enhance the existing knowledge in this field. Both experimental and numerical approaches are going to be used to study the problem. Highly qualified personnel will be trained to pursue research in this area and monitor the existing systems in both nature and industry. Numerical modeling can be a suitable choice to study the dynamics of sediment-laden and bubbly jets. Commercial modeling packages or research-based open source models can be used in this program. Many scenarios can be simulated using a validated model to study other flow configurations for designing and optimization purposes. Sub-routines can be developed for research-based codes to enhance the capability of models for more accurate simulations in this field.