Experimental research on the shape of steam plume of supersonic steam jet immerged in subcooled water

The shape of steam plume of supersonic steam jet immerged in the quiescent subcooled water was investigated experimentally, the steam entry pressure was in the range of 0.2-0.5 MPa and the subcooled water temperature was in the range of 20-70°C. Experiment results indicate that, according to the expansion times, five different shapes of steam plume were found, which were contracting, expand-contract, double expand-contract, contract-expand-contract and exhaling shapes. As the increase of steam entry pressure and water temperature, the dimensionless penetration length of steam plume was increased. For the jets whose designed pressure ratios were 0.318 and 0.113, the dimensionless penetration length of steam plume were in the ranges of 3.45-12.62 and 2.40-9.81, which were less than sonic jet condensation under the same conditions. Further more, the correlation was set up to predict the dimensionless penetration length, and the predicted errors were within the band of 18%.