Interaction of a droplet spray with a turbulent plane air jet impacting a wall: Application to the confinement of atmospheres contaminated with particles by air curtain

Experiments are carried out to study the interaction of a spray of spherical micronic oil droplets with a turbulent plane air jet impacting a wall. The context is the separation of a contaminated atmosphere with passive particles from a clean atmosphere by using a dynamical air curtain. A spinning disk is used to produce the spray of oil droplets close to the air jet. The diameter of the produced droplets varies between 0.3 and [Formula: see text] m. The jet and particulate Reynolds numbers and the jet and Kolmogorov–Stokes numbers are, respectively, equal to Re[Formula: see text] , [Formula: see text] , [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] . The ratio of the jet height to nozzle width is [Formula: see text] . The flow properties in the experiments are measured by particle image velocimetry and are in good agreement with large eddy simulation results. The droplet/particle passing rate (PPR) through the air jet is measured by an optical particle counter. The PPR decreases with the increase in the droplet diameter for the studied droplet size range. Whatever the droplet size is, the PPR increases with time due to the presence of two large vortices on each side of the air jet that bring the droplets back to the jet. The accuracy and repeatability of the measurements are verified. The present results can be used to validate Eulerian/Lagrangian numerical simulations on the interaction of micronic droplets with a turbulent air jet.