Turbulence and energy budget in a self-preserving round jet: direct evaluation using large eddy simulation

Abstract

An axisymmetric jet at a diameter-based Reynolds number of 1.1 × 104 is computed by a large eddy simulation (LES) in order to investigate its self-similarity region. The LES combines low-dissipation numerical schemes and explicit filtering of the flow variables to relax energy through the smaller scales discretized. The computational domain extends up to 150 jet radii in the downstream direction, which is found to be large enough to discretize a part of this region. Turbulence in the self-preserving jet is characterized by evaluating explicitly from the LES fields the second- and third-order moments of velocity, the pressure–velocity correlations as well as the budgets for the turbulent kinetic energy and for its components. Reference solutions are thus obtained. They agree well with the experimental data given by Panchapakesan & Lumley (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 246, 1963, p. 197) for a jet at the same Reynolds number. The distance required to achieve self-similarity in the LES, around 120 radii from the inflow, is particularly similar to that in the experiment. The discrepancies observed with respect to the data provided by Panchapakesan & Lumley and by Hussein, Capp & George (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 258, 1994, p. 31) for a jet at a higher Reynolds number, specially regarding the turbulence diffusion and the dissipation, are discussed. They appear largely resulting from the approximations made in the experiments to estimate the quantities that cannot be measured with accuracy. The role of the pressure terms in the energy redistribution is also clarified by the LES. Moreover, the turbulent energy budget is calculated in the jet from an equation derived from the filtered compressible Navier–Stokes equations, which includes the dissipation due to the explicit filtering. This has allowed us to assess the behaviour of the LES approach based on relaxation filtering (LES-RF) from the contributions of filtering and viscosity to energy dissipation. The filtering activity is particularly shown to adjust by itself to the grid and flow properties.