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Two-dimensional virtual impactors. Final report

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/6607947· OSTI ID:6607947

Theoretical predictions using both potential flow analyses and solutions to Navier-Stokes equations are made for the operating characteristics of a two-dimensional virtual impactor. Experiments were performed with 2.5 ..mu..m, uranine tagged, di-octylphthalate (DOP) oil droplets for a wide range of prototype geometries to measure the magnitude of internal losses and to fully characterize the instrument response. The influence of geometry including the throat angle (38/sup 0/ less than or equal to ..beta../sub 0/ less than or equal to 58.2/sup 0/) and normalized void width (0.7 less than or equal to h/w less than or equal to 1.5) on the particle cutoff diameter, efficiency curve steepness and properties of the internal particle loss factor are presented for fixed instrument Reynolds numbers Re = 1540 and bleed flow f = 0.1. The theory, supported by trends in the empirical data, predicts that internal particle losses reduce to zero as the normalized void width increases to h/w = 1.4 +- .1 while the data show a minimum at h/w = 1.6 +- .1. Increasing the void width, however, is shown to substantially reduce the steepness of the particle efficiency curves. Visual observations of the onset of fluid separation for two-dimensional jets impinging upon a void were conducted with a scaled-up water model and correlated with theory. It was found that the limiting void width h/sub lim//w marking the onset of fluid instabilities peaked for an intermediate value of the fluid deflecting plate angle ..beta.. approx. = 80/sup 0/ with larger values of h/sub lim//w corresponding to smaller throat angles ..beta../sub 0/. The limiting void width h/sub lim//w also increased with larger bleed flows into the void. These instabilities may make it difficult to correlate experimental virtual impactor data with theory.

Research Organization:
Georgia Inst. of Tech., Atlanta (USA); Illinois Univ., Urbana (USA). Dept. of Physics
DOE Contract Number:
AS02-77EV04319
OSTI ID:
6607947
Report Number(s):
COO-4319-6
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English