Effects of Stream Turbulence on Free Shear Flows

Abstract

Summary Recently attention has been given to the effects of the stream turbulence on the characteristics of the turbulent boundary layers and the turbulent shear flows. For the boundary layers considerable information on the effects of the stream turbulence is available but for the shear flows it is limited. This paper describes an experimental investigation for the effects of stream turbulence on the development of an asymmetric jet and a plane mixing layer. It is shown that the characteristics of these flows are considerably affected by the stream turbulence but for the measurements in the plane mixing layers at large downstream distances the influence of the stream turbulence is negligible provided the intensities are less than 0.6%. For the plane mixing layer the results show that the flow characteristics are not affected significantly by the initial boundary layers, the acoustic disturbances and the boundary conditions imposed by the end plates.