The Effect of Aspect-Ratio on the Development of the Large-Scale Structures in the Three-Dimensional Wall Jet

The development of the large-scale structures in three-dimensional wall jets exiting rectangular nozzles with aspect-ratios of 1 and 4 was investigated using simultaneous measurements of the fluctuating wall pressure across the jet. The pressure fluctuations in the jets were asymmetric and caused the fluctuating wall pressure to be poorly correlated across the jet centerline. A Proper Orthogonal Decomposition analysis indicated that both the first and second modes make similar contributions to the variance of the fluctuating pressure, and were symmetric and antisymmetric, respectively, and the interplay between these modes caused the asymmetry in the instantaneous pressure fluctuations across the jet centreline. A wavelet analysis of the instantaneously reconstructed pressure fields indicated that the fluctuations were predominantly in two frequency bands near the jet centerline, but were only contained in one band on the outer lateral edges of the jet, indicating there were two different large-scale motions present. The development of large-scale structures in the two jets initially differed in the intermediate field with the antisymmetric mode being more prominent in the square jet and the symmetric mode being more prominent in the larger aspect-ratio jet. Further downstream, the symmetric mode was more prominent in both jets.