A review of the conditions leading to downwash in physical modeling experiments

Although stack downwash is not a widespread problem at modern fossil-fuel power plants and larger industrial stacks, it is a very important problem in simulating buoyant plumes in wind tunnels and towing tanks. Scaling criteria for avoiding downwash in ten subcritical model experiments have been reviewed. A comparison was made between data on the occurrence of downwash from 10 modeling studies to the theory proposed by Tatom (1986). In general, there was good agreement of Tatomʹs theory with the occurrence of downwash.