Numerical analysis on interactions of vortex, shock wave, and exothermal reaction in a supersonic planar shear layer laden with droplets

The analysis on the interactions of a large-scale shearing vortex, an incident oblique shock wave, and a chemical reaction in a planar shear layer is performed by numerical simulations. The reacting flows are obtained by directly solving the multi-species Navier-Stokes equations in the Eulerian frame, and the motions of individual point-mass fuel droplets are tracked in the Lagrangian frame considering the two-way coupling. The influences of shock strength and spray equivalence ratio on the shock-vortex interaction and the induced combustion are further studied. Under the present conditions, the incident shock is distorted by the vortex evolution to form the complicated waves including an incident shock wave, a multi-refracted wave, a reflected wave, and a transmitted wave. The local pressure and temperature are elevated by the shock impingement on the shearing vortex, which carries flammable mixtures. The chemical reaction is mostly accelerated by the refracted shock across the vortex. Two different exothermal reaction modes could be distinguished during the shock-vortex interaction as a thermal mode, due to the additional energy from the incident shock, and a local quasi detonation mode, due to the coupling of the refracted wave with reaction. The former mode detaches the flame and shock wave, whereas the latter mode tends to occur when the incident shock strength is higher and local equivalence ratio is higher approaching to the stoichiometric value. The numerical results illustrate that those two modes by shock-vortex interaction depend on the structure of the post-shock flame kernel, which may be located either in the vortex-braids of post-shock flows or in the shock-vortex interaction regime. Published by AIP Publishing.