The interference of thermal fields from line sources in grid turbulence

Abstract

The interference of passive thermal fields produced by two (and more) line sources in decaying grid turbulence is studied by using the inference method described by Warhaft (1981) to determine the cross-correlation coefficient ρ between the temperature fluctuations produced by the sources. The evolution of ρ as a function of downstream distance, for 0.075 <d/l< 10, wheredis the wire spacing andlis the integral lengthscale of the turbulence, is determined for a pair of sources located at various distances from the grid. It is found that ρ may be positive or negative (thereby enhancing or diminishing the total temperature variance) depending on the line-source spacing, their location from the grid and the position of measurement. It is also shown that the effects of a mandoline (Warhaft & Lumley 1978) may be idealized as the interference of thermal fields produced by a number of line sources. Thus new light is shed on the rate of decay of scalar-variance dissipation. The thermal field of a single line source is also examined in detail, and these results are compared with other recent measurements.