Parametric Analysis of Excited Round Jets - Numerical Study

A computational analysis of excited round jets is presented with emphasis on jet bifurcation phenomenon due to superposition of axial and flapping forcing terms. Various excitation parameters are examined including the amplitudes of the forcing, their frequencies and phase shift. It is shown that alteration of these parameters significantly influences the spatial jet evolution. This dependence may be used to control the jet behaviour in a wide range of qualitatively different flow structures, starting from a modification of the spreading rate of a single connected jet, through large scale deformation of an asymmetric jet, onto jet bifurcation leading to a doubly and even triply split time-averaged jet, displaying different strengths and locations of the branches. We establish that: (i) jet splitting is possible only when the amplitudes of the forcing terms are comparable to or larger than the level of natural turbulence; (ii) the angle between the developing jet branches can be directly controlled by the frequency of the axial forcing and the phase shift between axial and flapping forcing. An optimum forcing frequency is determined, leading to the largest spreading rate.