Numerical Investigation of the Effects of an Orifice Inlet on the Performance of an Ejector

Orifice Inlet효과에 의한 이젝터 성능에 관한 수치해석적 연구

Supersonic ejectors are simple mechanical components, which generally perform mixing and/or recompression of two fluid streams. Ejectors have found many applications in engineering. In aerospace engineering, they are used for altitude testing of a propulsion system by reducing the pressure of a test chamber. It is composed of three major sections: a vacuum test chamber, a propulsive nozzle, and a supersonic exhaust diffuser. This paper aims at the improvement of ejector-diffuser performance by focusing attention on reducing exhaust back flow into the test chamber, since alteration of the backflow or recirculation pattern appears as one of the potential means of significantly improving low supersonic ejector-diffuser performance. The simplest backflow-reduction device was an orifice plate at the duct inlet, which would pass the jet and entrained fluid but impede the movement of fluid upstream along the wall. Results clearly showed that the performance of ejector-diffuser system was improved for certain a range of system pressure ratios, where as there was no appreciable transition in the performance for lower pressure ratios and the orifice plate was detrimental to the ejector performance for higher pressure ratios. It is found that an appropriately sized orifice system should produce considerable improvement in the ejector-diffuser performance in the intended range of pressure ratios.