Direct numerical simulation of nonisothermal turbulent wall jets

Abstract

Direct numerical simulations of plane turbulent nonisothermal wall jets are performed and compared to the isothermal case. This study concerns a cold jet in a warm coflow with an ambient to jet density ratio of ρa/ρj=0.4, and a warm jet in a cold coflow with a density ratio of ρa/ρj=1.7. The coflow and wall temperature are equal and a temperature dependent viscosity according to Sutherland’s law is used. The inlet Reynolds and Mach numbers are equal in all these cases. The influence of the varying temperature on the development and jet growth is studied as well as turbulence and scalar statistics. The varying density affects the turbulence structures of the jets. Smaller turbulence scales are present in the warm jet than in the isothermal and cold jet and consequently the scale separation between the inner and outer shear layer is larger. In addition, a cold jet in a warm coflow at a higher inlet Reynolds number was also simulated. Although the domain length is somewhat limited, the growth rate and the turbulence statistics indicate approximate self-similarity in the fully turbulent region. The use of van Driest scaling leads to a collapse of all mean velocity profiles in the near-wall region. Taking into account the varying density by using semilocal scaling of turbulent stresses and fluctuations does not completely eliminate differences, indicating the influence of mean density variations on normalized turbulence statistics. Temperature and passive scalar dissipation rates and time scales have been computed since these are important for combustion models. Except for very near the wall, the dissipation time scales are rather similar in all cases and fairly constant in the outer region.