Inviscid axisymmetric absolute instability of swirling jets

Abstract

The propagation characteristics of inviscid axisymmetric linearized disturbances to swirling jets are investigated for two families of model velocity profiles. Briggs' method is applied to dispersion relations to determine when the basic swirling jets are absolutely or convectively unstable. The method is also applied to the neutral inertial waves used by Benjamin to characterize the subcritical or supercritical nature of the flow. Although these waves are neutral, Briggs' method nonetheless indicates a qualitative change in behaviour at Benjamin's criticality condition. The first model jet has uniform axial velocity, rigid-body rotation and issues into still fluid. A known difficulty in the application of Briggs' method to the analytical dispersion relation for inviscid waves in this flow is resolved. The difficulty is that the pinch point can cross into the left half of the complex-wavenumber plane, where waves grow exponentially with radius and fail to satisfy homogeneous boundary conditions. In this paper the physical consequences of this behaviour are explained. It is shown that if the still fluid is of infinite extent in the radial direction, then the jet is convectively unstable to axisymmetric waves, but if the jet is confined by an outer cylinder concentric with the jet axis, then it becomes absolutely unstable to axisymmetric waves provided that the swirl (ratio of azimuthal to axial velocity) is large enough. This destabilizing effect of confinement occurs however large the radius of the outer cylinder. A second family of model swirling jets with smooth profiles and a finite thickness shear layer at the jet edge is also studied. The inviscid stability equations are solved numerically in this case. The results from the analytical dispersion relations are reproduced as the shear layer thickness tends to zero. However, increasing this thickness acts to destabilize the absolute instability of axisymmetric waves, apparently due to the centrifugal instability present in the shear layer. It is suggested that the transition from convective to absolute instability could be associated with the onset of an unsteady vortex breakdown. The swirl required to produce this transition can be either greater, or less, than the swirl required to produce the transition from supercritical to subcritical flow, depending on the details of the basic velocity profiles. A codimension-two point in parameter space can exist where the unsteady bifurcation associated with the convective–absolute transition coincides with the steady bifurcation associated with the supercritical–subcritical transition. Such codimension-two points can control a rich variety of nonlinear dynamical behaviour.