Numerical investigation of a high pressure hydrogen jet of 82Â MPa with adaptive mesh refinement: The starting transient evolution and Mach disk stabilization

•Adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) technology is beneficial for the multi-scale flow calculation.•Hydrogen jet of 82 MPa with a tiny jet orifice diameter of 0.2 mm still presents a classical under expanded flow structure•The elapsed time for Mach disk formation can be similar even with very different NPR and nozzle sizes.•Under expanded jet flow can be simplified into two main flow branches.

A three-dimensional (3D) strongly under expanded hydrogen jet flow is numerically investigated with a storage pressure of 82 MPa and a tiny jet orifice diameter of 0.2 mm. The full compressible Navier-Stokes equations are utilized in a domain with a size of about 3 × 3 × 6 m which is discretized by employing adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) technology to reduce the number of grid cells. The highly under expanded hydrogen jet flow with a nozzle pressure ratio (NPR) of about 809 is then captured from the very beginning when hydrogen is ejected out of the jet orifice. The starting transient evolution and Mach disk stabilization are then discussed in details. It is found that with the AMR technology, the grid number can be greatly reduced and high resolutions can be easily installed to deal with the small jet orifice size together with those flow microscales. Jet flow is numerically captured and discussed. It is found that over expansion occurs in this under expanded jet. The secondary shock is generated to match the pressure which plays the most important physics in the starting transient period of an under expanded hydrogen jet. The Mach shock and the lateral barrel shock which are originated from the secondary shock play central roles. The jet flow is divided into subsonic and supersonic branches in the near-nozzle region, which makes the highly under-expanded jets have two annular shear layers, the inner and outer layer, in this region.