PROPAGATION OF HARMONIC THERMAL WAVES IN A SHEAR-FLOW

The thermal field of a shear flow near a plane wall, which was heated with a harmonic source, was computed. For a linear profile of the flow velocity, an exact expression of the spatial spectrum was obtained. T he field itself was reconstructed from the spectrum using two methods: analytical (for the asymptotics) and numerical (based on FFTs). The r esults were compared with each other and with experimental data from t he literature, and they were found to agree fairly well. Methods simil ar to acoustic ray formalism were readily applied to the thermal wave propagation in a flow. Under certain conditions, interference phenomen a characteristics of regular wave processes were observed.