Turbulent transport and entrainment in jets and plumes: a DNS study

TL;DR

This study uses direct numerical simulations to analyze turbulent transport and entrainment in jets and plumes, validating classical models and revealing turbulence characteristics and differences between jets and plumes.

Contribution

The paper provides a comprehensive DNS dataset confirming the Priestley and Ball entrainment model and compares turbulence properties in jets and plumes.

Findings

Entrainment model validity in unstratified environments

Turbulence in jet and plume cores are similar

Turbulent Prandtl number is approximately 0.7

Abstract

We present a new DNS data set for a statistically axisymmetric turbulent jet, plume and forced plume in a domain of size $40 r_0 \times 40 r_0 \times 60 r_0$, where $r_0$ is the source diameter. The data set provides evidence of the validity of the Priestley and Ball entrainment model in unstratified environments (excluding the region near the source), which is corroborated further by the Wang and Law and Ezzamel \emph{et al.} experimental data sets, the latter being corrected for a small but influential co-flow that affected the statistics. We show that the turbulence in the core region of the jet and the plume are practically indistinguishable, although the invariants of the anisotropy tensor reveal a significant change in the turbulence near the plume edge. The DNS data indicates that the turbulent Prandtl number is about 0.7 for both jets and plumes. For plumes, this value is a result of the difference in the ratio of the radial turbulent transport of radial momentum and buoyancy. For jets however, the value originates from a different spread of the buoyancy and velocity profiles, in spite of the fact that the ratio of radial turbulent transport terms is approximately unity. The DNS data does not show any evidence of similarity drift associated with gradual variations in the ratio of buoyancy profile to velocity profile widths.