An experimental study of single and multiple turbulent buoyant jets in crossflow

The phenomenon of turbulent, buoyant jets in crossflow is a fundamental fluid mechanics problem with many application areas, including jets discharged from natural and mechanical draft cooling towers. Buoyant jets were studied for many years, and as a result there exists a large body of literature on this and other related topics. An extensive review of this literature showed that there was a need for an improved laboratory simulation technique and quantitative data on both single and multiple buoyant jets. A new buoyant jet simulation technique is developed which uses a vertically downward discharge of nitrogen gas into a wind tunnel with discharge temperature of the jet ranging between -30 C and -150 C. This technique is capable of simulating the puff-like nature of prototype cooling tower plumes as evidenced by flow visualization which is inherent in this method. A large body of data are reported for both single and multiple jets covering a wide range of parameters.