On the structures in the near-wake region of an elevated turbulent jet in a crossflow

Abstract

A pattern-recognition technique, applied to multi-point simultaneous velocity measurements obtained with 45° X-wire anemometer probes, is used to extract and characterize the underlying organized motions, i.e. coherent structures, within the near-wake region of a turbulent round jet discharged perpendicularly from a pipe into a crossflow. This flow has been found to be quite complex owing to its three-dimensional nature and the interactions between several flow regions. Analyses of the underlying coherent structures, which play an important role in the physics of the flow, are still rare and are mostly based on flow-visualization techniques. Using a pattern-recognition technique in conjunction with hot-wire measurements, we recently examined the wake regions of the pipe and jet at levels near the tip of the pipe, and found that Kármán-like vortex structures in the wake of the pipe are locked to similar structures in the jet-wake. In this paper we expand upon our previous work and characterize these structures throughout the wake of the jet up into the region of the bent-over jet – a region where they have not been identified previously. The complex geometry of these structures in the wake of the jet as well as their interaction with the bent-over jet are discussed. The results show that these structures split before they link to similar structures on the opposite side of the symmetry plane in the jet region. The results further suggest that the vorticity due to the structures in the wake of the jet contributes to the motion of the well-known counter-rotating vortex pair.