Visualization of Underexpanded Jet Structure from Square Nozzle

Numerical and experimental investigation were car-ried out to clarify the flow structure of underexpanded jet from a square nozzle. The square nozzle rep-resents one of the clustered combustors of a linear aerospike engine. From the numerical results, the three-dimensional shock wave of the underexpanded square jet was found to be composed of two shocks. One is the intercepting shock which corresponds to the shock observed in two-dimensional planar jet. The other is the recompression shock divided into two types. The expansion fans coming from the nozzle edges interact with each other at the comers of the nozzle exit, and overexpanded regions are generated. Therefore one of the two recompression shocks is formed at the comers of the nozzle exit behind the overexpanded regions. As the jet goes downstream, the overexpanded regions grow larger to coalesce at the symmetry planes. Then, the other type of the recompression shock is generated. The three-dimensional shock structure formed by the intercepting shock and the recompression shocks dominates the expansion of the jet boundary. The shock detection algorithm us-ing CFD results was developed to reveal the relation between the shock waves and the jet boundary, and it was found that the cross-sectional jet shape becomes cross-shape. The key features observed in the numerical investigation were verified by the experimental results. The shock structure at the diagonal plane was in good agreement with the experimental schlieren images. Moreover, the cross-sections visualized by the Mie scattering method confirmed that the cross-section of the jet becomes cross-shape.