Swirl Characteristics of an S-Shaped Air Intake with both Horizontal and Vertical Offsets

Summary

As part of a series of investigations of the swirl in S-ducts, the present paper gives the results of tests on a duct with both horizontal and vertical offsets, for comparison with earlier work on ducts with horizontal offset only. Results obtained bear a similarity to those of Reference 2, for which the duct had the same cross-sectional shapes and areas, but the addition of a vertical offset magnifies the resultant swirl considerably. As before, the swirl is found to be sensitive to entry conditions, in that a solid spoiler, blocking off 15% of entry width from the inside wall, reverses the sense of the final swirl. Taken overall, the results throw additional light on the nature of the swirl problem. A particularly interesting and potentially important correlation is obtained between the final swirl (in magnitude and sense of rotation) and a pressure difference between the top and bottom walls of the duct, taken in the end plane of the second bend.