Mixing augmentation mechanism induced by the pseudo shock wave in transverse gaseous injection flow fields

• Transverse gaseous injection flow field with the pseudo shock wave was investigated.
• Pseudo shock wave has a large impact on the mixing enhancement in supersonic flows.
• Mixing efficiency increases with the increase of the back pressure.
• Mixing and combustion process can be enhanced mutually.

The mixing process between the injectant and air is very crucial for the engineering implementation of the scramjet engine, and this is due to the very short resident time of fuel in supersonic flows. In the current study, the three-dimensional Reynolds-average Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations coupled with the two equation k-ω shear stress transport (SST) turbulence model have been employed to investigate the transverse injection flow field with the pseudo shock wave induced by the high back pressure, and the freestream Mach number is 3.75. At the same time, the influence of the back pressure on the flow field properties has been evaluated as well. The obtained results show that the pseudo shock wave induced by the back pressure plays an important role in the mixing enhancement between the injectant and air. When the back pressure ratio is larger than 5.0, the mixing efficiency increases with the increase of the back pressure ratio. However, when the back pressure ratio is 3.0, the near-field mixing process has been improved, and accordingly its mixing efficiency in this region is larger than the benchmark. This implies that the intense combustion downstream of the injector can enhance the mixing process between the injectant and air, and the mixing and combustion process can be enhanced mutually. When the pseudo shock wave has been pushed upstream of the wall orifice, more injectant has been brought into the separation zone upstream of the injector, and this is beneficial for the mixing process between the injectant and air.