Plane jet excited by disturbances with spanwise phase variations

Evolution of the near-field structures of a plane jet excited by temporal periodic disturbances with spanwise phase variations was investigated with stereoscopic particle image velocimetry. The three-dimensional vorticity distributions were reconstructed by using Taylor’s frozen field hypothesis. When ϕ, the temporal phase difference of disturbances in the spanwise direction was π; chain-link-fence type structures were formed. The \(\Uplambda\) vortices in the chain-link-fence structures were then distorted into an \(\Upomega\) shape, and the head of the vortex was detached and reconnects to form a vortex ring, or reconnects to the adjacent V-shaped vortices to form an A-shaped vortex. After the reconnection stage, the flow field was occupied by uniformly distributed fine scale eddies. Here, the overall turbulent kinetic energy and shear stress were suppressed, and the jet width was narrower than that of the unexcited case and other forced cases. In the case of ϕ = π/2, spanwise rollers and rib structures were formed near the nozzle exit after the first vortex pairing. However, further vortex pairing did not occur downstream, and the rate at which the jet widened was reduced.