Impinging gas jets have many engineering applications, including propulsion, cooling, drying, and coating control processes. In continuous hot-dip galvanizing, a molten zinc-based coating is applied to a steel substrate for corrosion protection. Planar impinging gas jets (industrially called air-knives) are employed to wipe the protective coating from the steel sheet to control the final coating weight. The maximum skin friction and pressure gradient developed by the impinging gas jet on the steel sheet heavily influences the final coating weight. In the thesis, the maximum skin friction developed on an rigid impingement plate positioned downstream of a planar impinging gas jet (scaled-up model air-knife) is measured using oil film interferometry (OFI). A maximum skin friction map based on the jet operating conditions is established, which can be used in conjunction with industrial coating weight models for film thickness prediction, and can be further employed in the assessment and verification of computational fluid dynamic (CFD) models.
As impinging gas jets reach higher flow velocities, inherent instabilities in the jet can amplify due to feedback loops created between the jet exit and the impingement plate. The flow field characteristics under resonance conditions are known to exhibit large amplitude jet column oscillations, and strong coherent fluid structures propagating down the impinging shear layers. This work examined the global effect of planar impinging gas jet oscillations on the maximum mean skin friction developed in the stagnation region using external jet forcing. Reductions in maximum mean impingement plate skin friction were confirmed and found to be caused by increased levels of fluid entrainment under jet forcing conditions.
The fluctuating velocity fields under external jet forcing was also examined. The velocity fluctuations due to both the coherent motion of the jet column, and the turbulence were obtained and analyzed using fluid dynamic tools such as particle image velocimetry (PIV) and proper orthogonal decomposition (POD). The fluctuating velocity of the planar impinging gas jet displayed increased levels of fluctuation intensity and unique flow field characteristics under external forcing, as well as, exhibited similar features to that of a high speed impinging planar gas jet under fluid resonance conditions. Overall, it is determined that enhanced planar impinging gas jet oscillations (or equivalent air-knife oscillations) is associated with adverse fluid effects, which degrade the wiping performance of the jet. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/23656 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Ritcey, Adam |
| Contributors | Ziada, Samir, McDermid, Joseph, Mechanical Engineering |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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