Experiment on jet-vortex interaction for variable mutual spacing

Abstract

The interaction of a line vortex with a collinearly aligned jet is a prototypical configuration for various important applications in aeronautics. The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of the jet flow on the kinematics and dynamics of a trailing vortex. A particular emphasis is on the effect of a variable relative jet–vortex spacing. To this end, we realized four different jet–vortex configurations in a wind-tunnel experiment at chord-based Reynolds number of 1.7 × 10^5 using high-speed stereo particle image velocimetry measurements in five transversal planes located between 2 and 26 chords behind the wing. Stochastic analyses reveal that the jet generally contributes an external excitation to the vortex as a function of the mutual spacing. Compared with the configuration without jets, the vortex amplification increases upon reducing the jet–vortex spacing. Most notably, for all but the closest spacing, the vortex response is qualitatively the same, changing mainly in magnitude. For the closest spacing, however, the dynamics is considerably different, which we suspect to be a consequence of jet entrainment. Proper orthogonal decomposition reveals, for the first time, that the collinearly aligned jet tends to excite a progressively broader range of vortex modes as the jet–vortex spacing is reduced. Close examination of the vortex mean flow seems to preclude linear vortex instabilities, while the vortex characteristics hint towards some form of receptivity mechanism to disturbances being located in the free stream. Our analyses are useful to validate simulation tools on configurations combining simultaneous lift and thrust effects.