Experimental Study of an Acoustically Excited Plane Jet at Low Reynolds Numbers

The dynamics of a vertical two-dimensional air jet under acoustic excitations at a low Reynolds number are investigated experimentally. The perturbation is introduced by means of a loudspeaker located in a settling chamber before the nozzle exit. The experiments are operated at Strouhal number St ranging from 0 to 1 and for different pulsation amplitudes. A laser plan is used to visualize the flow and the hot-wire anemometry for more specific measures of the mean and fluctuation velocity. The discussion is focused on the influence of two parameters governing the flow: the Strouhal number St and pulsing amplitude. The main results show that the flow consisting of the vortex propagating downstream a nozzle exit is strongly affected by the excitation. Indeed, the introduction of an external perturbation introduces a more rapid degeneration of the potential core with the appearance of vortices near the nozzle as the pulsation amplitude increases. These vortices are amplified and become larger than the nozzle width which induces the enhancing of the entrainment and mixing effects of the shear layers. Another very important phenomenon is observed: the excitation has led to the formation of a switching from the asymmetric mode (sinuous mode) to the symmetric mode (varicose mode).