Crow & Champagne (1971), Bechert & Pfizenmaier (1975) and Moore (1977) have observed that the growth, mixing and noise production of jet flows are sensitive to harmonic forcing. This paper describes an attempt to model numerically certain features of these flows. The model flow is restricted to be axisymmetric and is consequently unrepresentative of the detailed structure in a real jet. Nonetheless, it is found that reasonable qualitative agreement exists between the results of the model and experiments as far as the large eddies are concerned. This suggests that a substantial part of the large-scale structure in a jet is essentially axisymmetric. Harmonic excitation is also applied to the model jet and the changes in frequency and amplitude of the excitation cause distinct changes in the wavelengths of the jet eddies. This resulting large-eddy behaviour is consistent with many features of the nonlinear behaviour observed experimentally in forced jets.

Flow induced by a body moving near a plane wall is analysed on the assumption that the normal distance from the wall of every point of the body is small compared to the body length. The flow is irrotational except for the vortex sheet representing the wake. The gap-flow problem in the case of unsteady motion is reduced to a nonlinear first-order ordinary differential equation in the time variable. In the special case of steady flow, some known results are recovered and generalized. As an illustration of the unsteady theory, the problem is solved of a flat plate falling toward the ground under its own weight, while moving forward at uniform speed.

A series of LDA measurements and visual observations of confined turbulent vortex flow are described. The experiments were performed with water as the fluid medium in a vortex tube of length-to-diameter ratio L/D = 3.8 for a range of exit diameters De between De/D = 1 and 0.18. The experiments reveal a remarkable change in the vortex structure as De is reduced: from a thick core with an axial-velocity defect in the centre, and even reversed flow, to a thin annular jet-like core with a peak axial velocity more than an order of magnitude greater than the average value and again a central velocity deficit. The corresponding swirl profiles are not remarkable and are well-represented under all conditions by the solution of Burgers (1948), albeit with a velocity maximum which is strongly dependent upon De.

A three-dimensional ‘turbulent spot’ has been induced in the axisymmetric free mixing layer of a 12.7 cm diameter air jet by a spark generated at the nozzle boundary layer upstream of the exit. The spot coherent-structure signature, buried in the large-amplitude random fluctuating signal, has been educed at three downstream stations within the apparent self-preserving region of the mixing layer (i.e. x/D = 1.5, 3.0 and 4.5) at the jet exit speed of 20 ms−1. The eduction has been performed through digital phase averaging of the spot signature from 200 realizations. In order to reduce the effect of the turbulence-induced jitter on the phase average, individual filtered signal arrays were optimally time-aligned through an iterative process of cross-correlation of each realization with the ensemble average. Further signal enhancement was achieved through rejection of realizations requiring excessive time shifts for alignment. The number of iterations required and the fraction of realizations rejected progressively increase with the downstream distance and the radial position.

The mixing-layer spot is a large-scale elongated structure spanning the entire width of the layer but does not appear to exhibit a self-similar shape. The dynamics of the mixing-layer spot and its eduction are more complicated than those of the boundary-layer spot. The spot initially moves downstream essentially at a uniform speed across the mixing layer, but further downstream it accelerates on the high-speed side and decelerates on the low-speed side. This paper discusses the data acquisition and processing techniques and the results based on the streamwise velocity signals. Phase average distributions of vorticity, pseudo-streamlines, coherent and background Reynolds stresses and further dynamics of the spot are presented in part 2 (Hussain, Kleis & Sokolov 1980).

The mechanics of a spark-induced coherent structure (called a ‘spot’) in the turbulent mixing layer of a 12.7 cm diameter incompressible air jet has been investigated through phase-locked measurements at three streamwise stations. Phase averages have been obtained from 200 realizations of X-wire (time-series) data after these are optimally time-aligned with respect to one another through an iterative process of maximization of cross-correlation of individual realizations with the ensemble average. Realizations that are grossly out of alignment owing to turbulence-induced distortions have been rejected; the rejection ratio increases with increasing radial position. Data include phase-average time series of background turbulence intensities, coherent and background Reynolds stresses, vorticity and intermittency at different transverse positions. Spatial distributions of these properties over the extent of the spot have been presented as contour maps. The computed pseudo-stream-functions have been compared with the phase-average streamlines inferred from the measured distributions of the velocity vector. Comparison with the phase-average intermittency contours show that the pseudo-stream-functions are reliable and, even though the integration involved produces smoothed-out stream functions, are most useful in deducing the structure dynamics and its convection velocity.

The spark-induced spot is an elongated large-scale coherent vortical structure spanning the entire thickness of the mixing layer, which moves downstream at a convection velocity of about 0.68Ue. The dynamics of the turbulent mixing layer spot, whose signature is buried in the large-amplitude background fluctuations, is much more complicated than that of the boundary-layer spot. The spot transports jet-core fluid outwards at its front and entrains ambient fluid primarily at its back; the outward-momentum transport dominates the inward transport. The Reynolds stress contribution by the spot structure is noticeably larger than that due to the background turbulence. The coherent structure vorticity is significantly modified by the structure-induced organization of the background Reynolds stress at the locations of ‘saddle points’ of the latter's distribution. The vorticity, intermittency and other turbulence measures, zone averaged over the extent of the spot, compare well with the time-average values, thus suggesting that the spark-induced ‘spot’ is probably not different from a naturally occurring large-scale coherent structure.

Measurements are presented of the Nusselt numbers N and Rayleigh numbers R for shallow layers of 4He gas heated from below. By choosing different temperatures between 2·3 K and 5·1 K and different pressures between 0·07 bar and 1 bar, the extent Q of departures from the Oberbeck-Boussinesq approximation was varied. When R was evaluated at the static temperature at the midplane of the cell, both the critical Rayleigh number Rc and the initial slope N1 of the Nusselt number were found to be independent of Q within experimental scatter. This result agrees with the prediction of Busse (1967). When R was evaluated at the cold end temperature of the cell, both Rc and N1 depended strongly upon Q.

The temporal evolution of small three-dimensional disturbances on viscous flows between parallel walls is studied. The initial-value problem is formally solved by using Fourier–Laplace transform techniques. The streamwise velocity component is obtained as the solution of a forced problem. As a consequence of the three-dimensionality, a resonant response is possible, leading to algebraic growth for small times. It occurs when the eigenvalues of the Orr–Sommerfeld equation coincide with the eigenvalues of the homogeneous operator for the streamwise velocity component. The resonance has been investigated numerically for plane Couette flow. The phase speed of the resonant waves equals the average mean velocity. The wavenumber combination that leads to the largest amplitude corresponds to structures highly elongated in the streamwise direction. The maximum amplitude, and the time to reach this maximum, scale with the Reynolds number. The aspect ratio of the most rapidly growing wave increases with the Reynolds number, with its spanwise wavelength approaching a constant value of about 3 channel heights.

A new family of finite-amplitude periodic progressive capillary waves is presented. They occur on the surface of a fluid of infinite depth in the absence of gravity. Each pair of adjacent waves touch at one point and enclose a bubble at pressure P. P depends upon the wave steepness s, which is the vertical distance from trough to crest divided by the wavelength. Previously Crapper found a family of waves without bubbles for 0 [les ] s [les ] s* = 0·730. Our solutions occur for all s > s** = 0·663, with the trough taken to be the bottom of the bubble. As s → ∞, the bubbles become long and narrow, while the top surface tends to a periodic array of semicircles in contact with one another. The solutions were obtained by formulating the problem as a nonlinear integral equation for the free surface. By introducing a mesh and difference method, we converted this equation into a finite set of nonlinear algebraic equations. These equations were solved by Newton's method. Graphs and tables of the results are included. These waves enlarge the class of phenomena which can occur in an ideal fluid, but they do not seem to have been observed.

In unidirectional flows, the ratios of Reynolds shear stress to total intensity (except near positions of zero stress) remain remarkably constant from one flow to another, but curvature or strong divergence of the mean flow causes very considerable changes in the stress ratios. A scheme for calculating the changes is described, based on the rapid-distortion approximation of the equations of motion. The results depend to some extent on the effective history of distortion of the turbulence and on the magnitude of an eddy viscosity that models the effect of nonlinear transfer of energy to smaller eddies of the dissipation sequence, but the correspondence with measured values in a distorted wake and in a curved mixing layer is fairly good. In particular, the curious behaviour of stress ratios in the curved mixing-layer can be reproduced qualitatively without any difficulty. Small perturbations of wall turbulence provide a simple application, and earlier calculations of the energy transfer between wind and water waves have been repeated including the changes in the stress ratios predicted by the scheme. In the latter case, very large changes in the distributions of pressure and shear stress are found, and the rates of energy transfer are much larger and in better agreement with observations.

A general solution for Stokes’ equation in bipolar co-ordinates is derived, and then applied to the arbitrary motion of a sphere in the presence of a plane fluid/fluid interface. The drag force and hydrodynamic torque on the sphere are then calculated for four specific motions of the sphere; namely, translation perpendicular and parallel to the interface and rotation about an axis which is perpendicular and parallel, respectively, to the interface. The most significant result of the present work is the comparison between these numerically exact solutions and the approximate solutions from part 1. The latter can be generalized to a variety of particle shapes, and it is thus important to assess their accuracy for this case of spherical particles where an exact solution can be obtained. In addition to comparisons with the approximate solutions, we also examine the predicted changes in the velocity, pressure and vorticity fields due to the presence of the plane interface. One particularly interesting feature of the solutions is the fact that the direction of rotation of a freely suspended sphere moving parallel to the interface can either be the same as for a sphere rolling along the interface (as might be intuitively expected), or opposite depending upon the location of the sphere centre and the ratio of viscosities for the two fluids.