Measurements of passive scalar diffusion downstream of regular and fractal grids

The diffusion of heat injected from a line source into turbulence generated by regular and fractal grids with the same solidity and inlet velocity was investigated experimentally with particular interest in the effects of grid geometry and relative location of the source on the width of the thermal plume and the mixing efficiency. These grids included one fractal square grid (FSG) and three regular square grids with mesh sizes that were comparable to the first (RG160), second (RG80) and fourth (RG18) iterations of the fractal grid. The heated line source was inserted on the centre plane of the grids, spanning the entire width of the wind tunnel at either of two downstream locations, an upstream location or a location nearly coincident with a grid. It was found that, in all cases examined, RG160 produced the strongest diffusion of the thermal plume and the highest level of scalar mixing. These observations were consistent with the evolution of the corresponding turbulent diffusivities, which, according to Taylor’s theory of diffusion, are the product of the transverse turbulence intensity and the integral length scale. We argue that to maximise scalar diffusion and mixing of a scalar released from a concentrated source inside a duct, one should prefer a regular grid over a fractal square grid; we also recommend the use of a grid with a mesh size roughly equal to half the height of the duct and placed at approximately one duct height upstream of the source.