Dynamics of Underwater Gas Blowout in Sonic Regime: Laboratory-Scale Study
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 149, Issue 1
Abstract
To understand the dynamics of vigorous gas jets in underwater gas blowouts, we present a laboratory experiment and data analysis to quantify key physical properties of gas jets horizontally discharged through a single nozzle. This study focuses on the sonic regime of the gas jets (the nominal Mach number from 0.8 to 3.34) and quantifies the jet-to-plume transition through observations of jet penetration length, expansion angle, and trajectory of the jets. Jet penetration is found to be scaled with a modified Froude number accounting for the parameters of real gas (density, pressure, and velocity) in the choked sonic flow. The surfacing fountain profiles are measured to connect water surface observation with the source dynamics through a nondimensional scaling using the densimetric Froude number defined at the release point. A robust power-law scaling with a modified Weber number is found to well characterize the median bubble diameter for the bubble breakup process in the sonic gas jets.
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Data Availability Statement
All data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
The experiments and analyses are supported by the University of Missouri Research Council Grants and the National Science Foundation (Award No. 2049415). The corresponding author is also supported by the National Academy of Sciences Gulf Research Program’s Early Career Research Fellowship.
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Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 149 • Issue 1 • January 2023
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© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Sep 12, 2021
Accepted: Sep 8, 2022
Published online: Nov 10, 2022
Published in print: Jan 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Apr 10, 2023
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