Turbulence measurements in axisymmetric jets of air and helium. Part 2. Helium jet

Abstract

A turbulent round jet of helium was studied experimentally using a composite probe consisting of an interference probe of the Way–Libby type and an × -probe. Simultaneous measurements of two velocity components and helium mass fraction concentration were made in the x/d range 50–120. These measurements are compared with measurements in an air jet of the same momentum flux reported in Part 1. The jet discharge Froude number was 14000 and the measurement range was in the intermediate region between the non-buoyant jet region and the plume region. The measurements are consistent with earlier studies on helium jets. The mass flux of helium across the jet is within ±10% of the nozzle input. The mean velocity field along the axis of the jet is consistent with the scaling expressed by the effective diameter but the mean concentration decay constant exhibits a density-ratio dependence. The radial profiles of mean velocity and mean concentration agree with earlier measurements, with the half-widths indicating a turbulent Schmidt number of 0.7. Significantly higher intensities of axial velocity fluctuations are observed in comparison with the air jet, while the intensities of radial and azimuthal velocity fluctuations are virtually identical with the air jet when scaled with the half-widths. Approximate budgets for the turbulent kinetic energy, scalar variance and scalar fluxes are presented. The ratio of mechanical to scalar timescales is found to be close to 1.5 across most of the jet. Current models for triple moments involving scalar fluctuations are compared with measurements. As was observed with the velocity triple moments in Part 1, the performance of the Full model that includes all terms except advection was found to be very good in the fully turbulent region of the jet.