Abstract
T-junctions were the components which were cheap and low cost. T-junctions have been commonly employed in piping systems for industries, including petrochemical plants, electronic cooling applications, molecular biological processes, power plants, etc. T-junctions would be one of the solutions in the aspect of thermal mixing. In the past, the related experimental research has been presented in the previous literature. However, the mixing effect and relative factors have not been discussed deeply. In the present work, a T-junction piping experimental system was installed for measuring the thermal mixing phenomenon. Experimentally, various angles of branch inlet and different directions of T-junction pipe have been introduced into these experiments. With the changing of the flow rate ratios or velocity ratios in the experimental conditions, the temperature variations of the thermal mixing along the downstream pipe and the formation of the reverse flow would be investigated. The results showed that the appearance of reverse flow is relative to velocity ratio, defined as ratio of main pipe to branch pipe. The reverse flow in the main pipe would enhance the thermal mixing along the downstream.