On the spreading mechanism of the three-dimensional turbulent wall jet

The paper explores, using different levels of turbulence closure, the compu ted behaviour of the three-dimensional turbulent wall jet in order to deter mine the cause of the remarkably high lateral rates of spread observed in e xperiments. Initially, to ensure accurate numerical solution, the equations are cast into the form appropriate to a self-similar shear flow thereby re ducing the problem to one of two independent variables. Our computations confirm that the strong lateral spreading arises from the creation of streamwise vorticity, rather than from anisotropic diffusion. T he predicted ratio of the normal to lateral spreading rates is, however, ve ry sensitive to the approximation made for the pressure-strain correlation. The version that, in other flows, has led to the best agreement with exper iments again comes closest in calculating the wall jet, although the comput ed rate of spread is still some 50% greater than in most of the measurement s. Our subsequent calculations, using a forward-marching scheme show that, because of the strong coupling between axial and secondary flow, the flow t akes much longer to reach its self-preserving state than in a two-dimension al wall jet. Thus, it appears very probable that none of the experimental d ata are fully developed.