Effects of injection temperature on the jet evolution under supercritical conditions

A nitrogen jet with subcritical and supercritical injection temperatures injected into a supercritical environment, in which both the pressure and temperature exceed those of the thermodynamic critical state, has been investigated numerically using large-eddy simulation technique. The effects of the injection temperature on the flow evolution are studied. We find that the jet surface is more unstable with the instability waves growing up and rolling into a succession of ring vortices for supercritical injection temperature, and the jet surface is nearly straight with the strong density stratification suppressing the development of the instability waves for subcritical injection temperature. With increasing injection temperature, the spatial growth rate of the surface instability wave strengthens and the frequency of the most unstable mode increases. This behavior is of importance in enhancing the fluid mixing effect. The results obtained in this study provide physical insight into the understanding of fundamental mechanisms of the jet evolution under supercritical conditions.