Comparison of Pressure and Velocity

Circular

double orifice

Triangle

square

For the pressure variation, it can be seen that the double orifice case has the lowest pressure
variation among the 4 cases. This could be an effect of the gap at the double orifice, which acts
as a damper to diffuse the flow.
However, the diffused flow for the double orifice also loses its periodic characteristic that is seen
in the other single orifice cases, hence the autocorrelation of pressure for double orifice case does
not exhibit the same alternating in-phase and anti-phase behavior seen in the other three orifice.

Autocorrelation functions of double orifice and single orifice (square)

Both the triangular orifice and circular orifice cases have similar orders of magnitude for
pressure variation at one order of magnitude higher than that of the double orifice case, primarily
due to their configuration of singular plate and non-tilde geometry. However, for square orifice,
it is at least one order of magnitude larger compared to the other singular plate configuration.

This is a likely consequence of the tilde geometry causing higher pressure fluctuations on the
airflow through the orifice.
Velocity wise, the tilde square case and the double orifice seems to have the same effect of
diffusing the flow, slowing the streamwise velocity component down substantially to the point of
causing it to fluctuate between positive and negative values and creating a region of reverse flow
right at the exit of the orifice. However, for the other single plate cases of triangle orifice and
circular orifice, the streamwise velocity components have a value of around 5 to 7 m/s, agreeing
with values similar to simulations done by Mendez et. al.
Correlation
All 4 cases have low correlation between pressure and 3 different velocity components. The
double orifice case has the strongest correlation between pressure and the velocity component
among the four cases with values for the three combinations ranging between 0.2 to 0.4, but
these values do not indicate a strong correlation compared to correlations between other
parameters.
Among the three cases (circular orifice, double orifice and triangular orifice), it can be seen that
the correlation of pressure to Vx at point 2 is the strongest compared to the other two directions,
albeit still relatively low for a normalized correlation coefficient.
Tilde square case has the weakest pressure to velocity component correlation with values at one
to two orders of magnitude smaller than the other three cases, presumably because the tilde effect
has a much larger effect on velocity compared to pressure.
Among the velocity correlations for the 4 cases, one particular correlation statistic stood out as
the highest value: Between Vy and Vz. This likely indicates some form of dependency for the
crossflow velocities for all four cases, resulting in a consistently higher correlation statistic
among the three permutations of velocities.
Autocorrelation
As mentioned earlier, the peculiar trend of having periodic pressure values at P2 is likely due to
the single plate, as it is notably absent in the double orifice setup. As a result of periodic pressure

variations, there is strong autocorrelation at certain -shift for all three single plate cases. In
addition, due to the minor sinusoidal pressure fluctuations, the autocorrelation switches between
positive and negative values, indicating that they are in phase and anti-phase respectively as the
-shift maps to different quadrants of the sinusoidal fluctuation.
For velocity autocorrelations in three directions for three of the cases (namely square orifice,
triangular orifice and double orifice cases), there is a sharp drop off once there is a -shift by
leading or lagging the compared signal. As mentioned earlier in the individual cases, this is a
result of the random fluctuation of velocities.
However, for the circular orifice, it seems to indicate some sort of periodic behaviour for V y and
Vz autocorrelations. This could be a result of the geometry, as a circular orifice would have
turbulent flow all around the circumference of the orifice and the measured point (Point 2) would
sustain isotropic turbulent fluctuations from all directions such that the effect is nullified.
However, this does not seem to extend to the double orifice case, which could be an effect of the
diffusion due to the gap in the set up for double orifice and could be a point for further studies.

Cross correlations
Among the cross-correlations, one particular dominant value is the cross-correlation between V y
and Vz for all four cases, giving a maximum of =1 for all cases. This reinforces the point made
earlier in the correlation of Vy and Vz that there is a direct influence of the Vy and Vz components
on each other in the flow at Point 2.
Most of the pressure and velocity component cross-correlations are relatively low for all cases,
with one notable exception: the double orifice case, with pressure and V x cross-correlation being
exceptionally high at 0.7 compared to others. This seems to suggest some form of stronger
dependency between pressure and velocity components for the double orifice case as opposed to
the singular plate cases, and ties in well with the observation seen in correlation values of P and
V components earlier on for the double orifice case. Again, this might be related to the diffusion
effect likely caused by the introduction of a gap acting as a damper to diffuse the flow.
Vorticity

Firstly, between the cases with circular orifice (circular orifice case and double orifice case) and
those with sharp edge orifice (triangular orifice and square orifice), there is higher minimum
vorticity for cases with circular orifice, while those with sharp edge orifice have lower minimum
vorticity. It is also observed that while the circular orifice has high vorticity along the entire
circumference of the orifice, those with sharp edges have low vorticity along the straight portions
of the orifice. At the edges (corners of the shapes for triangle and square orifice), the vorticity
increases quickly to reach higher maximum vorticity values and the high vorticity values are
concentrated in the corners of these shapes.
For the cases with circular orifice, the double orifice has the lowest maximum vorticity among
all four cases. It also has lower minimum and maximum vorticity compared to the single plate
orifice case. This is likely due to the diffusion effect due to the gap as discussed earlier, slowing
the flow down so that shear forces are lower.
Lastly, between the orifices with sharp edges, the tilde square orifice has the highest vorticities at
the top lip where the blockage effect is the most dominant, and the lower lip with a smaller
blockage effect does not seem to generate vorticity as high as the before mentioned top lip. In
contrast, for the triangular orifice case without the tilde geometry, the highest vorticity is
generated at the midpoint of the plate, in between the inlet and the outlet.
From the above observations, it seems that the tilde geometry along with the shaping of the
orifice can be used to reposition zones of high vorticity, and by extension, adjust the positions
along the orifice where turbulence occurs and the severity of it. The repositioning of turbulence
can be used to good effect in combustion chamber orifices, if it affects the relighting of fuel-air
mixture and its flame holding properties.
Limitations
Geometry of Mesh and Mesh Count
While all care was taken to ensure the different simulation cases are similar in most parameters
except the shape of the orifice, it was impossible to ensure that meshing was fine enough for all
cases. This was due to two factors: the half-million grid restriction imposed on the academic
version of Fluent we were using, so we had to use a coarse mesh. This created limitations on the

constraints that could be used to generate grid sizes appropriate for the different shapes.
Furthermore, the triangular orifice case was particularly problematic and a structured mesh could
not be generated with the limitations in grid numbers and constraints, so that particular case was
meshed with an unstructured mesh, and special care had to be taken to keep the mesh resolution
as optimal as possible without introducing too much skewness. It was the limitations in the
coarse mesh that could have led to the next problem as mentioned below.
Transient and Steady State Solvers
While we used the steady state solver with UDF for the pressure outlet at the start of the
simulation to simplify it and cut down the run time to reasonable levels, it seemed that
limitations in the solver in working with the generated coarse meshes caused the solver to default
to the transient solver, which ignored the UDF and gave rise to the problems mentioned in the
discussion about the fast fourier transform section, with an example of the FFT of pressure at
Point 2 not yielding any significant frequencies as shown below, a trend seen on the triangular
orifice case as well.

FFT of pressure at point 2 for triangular orifice case

As a result, further analysis on FFT and spectral density could not be carried out on most of the
cases as they yielded no significant results.

In addition, it was noted from the literature review that vortex shedding at the edges of the orifice
might have a shedding frequency and influenced the spectral density results (zhao dans paper)
but it was not something that could be validated from these simulation runs as there were too
many uncertainties in the frequency domain due to the solvers issues with the coarse mesh used
in the simulation.
The two limitations above meant that convergence of values was a problem, causing residuals to
build up over the course of the iteration as shown in Section, although the values were still well
within the convergence range set. However, this meant that the some parameters collected would
have inaccuracies of some sort; while they gave a good visualization of the flow phenomenon
across differently shaped orifices, some of the parameters were not as accurate as it should have
been.
Time Limitations
Each LES simulation took an average of three days to run at the current time step setting and
mesh count on the maximum number of available cores for each workstation, and given
computer access limitations by the schools authorities, it was not possible to run with multiple
monitors at different points, which would have given us more datasets to analyze for
autocorrelations and cross-correlations and given us more valuable trends on Reynolds shear
stresses across the orifice.
As a result, the four cases were run with the default setting with two points in the centerline of
the orifice, before and after the plate. These points, while able to give us an indication of the flow
properties, were not able to give us a full picture of how the flow would develop in other points
around the orifice. More monitors at other points in the crossflow direction would have allowed
us to see how shear stresses varied across different orifice geometries and a more meaningful
interpretation of the flow data.
Conclusion