A numerical study of a confined turbulent wall jet with an external stream

Abstract

Wall jet flow exists widely in engineering applications, including the simulation of thunderstorm downburst outflows, and has been investigated extensively by both experimental and numerical methods. Most previous studies focused on the scaling laws and self-similarity, while the effect of lip thickness and external stream height on mean velocity has not been examined in detail. The present work is a numerical study, using steady Reynolds-Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) simulations at a Reynolds number of 3.5 X 104, of a turbulent plane wall jet with an external stream to investigate the influence of the wall jet domain on downstream development of the flow. The comparisons of flow characteristics simulated by the Reynolds stress turbulence model closure (Stress-omega, SWRSM) and experimental results indicate that this model may be considered reasonable for simulating the wall jet. The confined wall jet is further analyzed in a parametric study, with the results compared to the experimental data. The results indicate that the height and the width of the wind tunnel and the lip thickness of the jet nozzle have a great effect on the wall jet development. The top plate of the tunnel does not confine the development of the wall jet within 200b of the nozzle when the height of the tunnel is more than 40b (b is the height of jet nozzle). The features of the centerline flow in the mid plane of the 3D numerical model are close to those of the 2D simulated plane wall jet when the width of the tunnel is more than 20b.