Chaotic characteristics enhanced by impeller of perturbed six-bent-bladed turbine in stirred tank

The fundamental way of improving the mixing efficiency is to induce the chaotic flow in a stirred vessel. The impeller form plays an important role for changing the structure of flow field and realizing chaotic mixing. Based on the velocity time series acquired by the experiment of particle image velocimetry (PIV), with the software Matlab, the macro-instability (MI), largest Lyapunov exponent (LLE), and Kolmogorov entropy in the water stirred tank is investigated respectively with the impeller of perturbed six-bent-bladed turbine (6PBT). The results show that the MI characteristics are obvious and two peak values of MI frequency are observed at the speed N = 60 rpm. With the increasing speed (more than 100 rpm), the peak characteristics of MI frequency disappear and a multi-scale wavelet structure of characterizing the chaotic flow field appears. Moreover, under the speed N = 60 rpm, the LLE is less than 0 and Kolmogorov entropy is 0, which means that the flow field is in the periodic moving state. As the speed is increased to more than 100 rpm, the LLE and Kolmogorov entropy are all more than 0, which indicates that the flow field goes into the chaotic mixing. When the speed reaches up to about 210 rpm, both of the LLE and Kolmogorov entropy achieve the optimum values, which will result in an excellent chaos with the highest mixing efficient. So it is feasible that the MI frequency, the LLE and the Kolmogorov entropy can be used to analyze the flow field characteristics in a stirred tank. The research results promote the understanding of the chaotic mixing mechanism and provide a theoretical reference for the development of new type impeller. Keywords: Macro-instability, The largest Lyapunov exponent, Kolmogorov entropy, The impeller of perturbed six-bent-bladed turbine, Chaotic mixing, PIV