Entrainment, diffusion and effective compressibility in a self-similar turbulent jet

Abstract

An experimental Lagrangian study based on particle tracking velocimetry has been completed in an incompressible turbulent round water jet freely spreading into water. The jet is seeded with tracers only through the nozzle: inhomogeneous seeding called nozzle seeding. The Lagrangian flow tagged by these tracers therefore does not contain any contribution from particles entrained into the jet from the quiescent surrounding fluid. The mean velocity field of the nozzle seeded flow, $\langle \boldsymbol {U}_{\boldsymbol {\varphi }} \rangle$ , is found to be essentially indistinguishable from the global mean velocity field of the jet, $\langle \boldsymbol {U} \rangle$ , for the axial velocity while significant deviations are found for the radial velocity. This results in an effective compressibility of the nozzle seeded flow for which $\boldsymbol {\nabla }\boldsymbol {\cdot } \langle \boldsymbol {U}_{\boldsymbol {\varphi }} \rangle \neq 0$ even though the global background flow is fully incompressible. By using mass conservation and self-similarity, we quantitatively explain the modified radial velocity profile and analytically express the missing contribution associated with entrained fluid particles. By considering a classical advection–diffusion description, we explicitly connect turbulent diffusion of mass (through the turbulent diffusivity $K_T$ ) and momentum (through the turbulent viscosity $\nu _T$ ) to entrainment. This results in new practical relations to experimentally determine the non-uniform spatial profiles of $K_T$ and $\nu _T$ (and hence of the turbulent Prandtl number $\sigma _T = \nu _T/K_T$ ) from simple measurements of the mean tracer concentration and axial velocity profiles. Overall, the proposed approach based on nozzle seeded flow gives new experimental and theoretical elements for a better comprehension of turbulent diffusion and entrainment in turbulent jets.