A necessary condition for linear stability of steady inviscid helical gas flows is found by the generalized progressing-wave expansion method. The criterion obtained is compared with the known Richardson number criteria giving sufficient conditions for stability.

Late transitional and turbulent flows in the mixing-layer region of a round jet are investigated for a range of Reynolds numbers by using flow-visualization and hotwire techniques. Attention is focused on the vortices in the transition region and the large eddies in the turbulent region. The interaction and coalescence of vortex rings in the transition region are described. The transition region is characterized by a growth of three-dimensional flow due to a wave instability of the cores of the vortex rings. The merging of these distorted vortices produces large eddies which can remain coherent up to the end of the potential-core region of the jet. A conditional sampling technique is used to measure eddies moving near the jet centre-line. These eddies differ significantly from the ring vortices as they are three-dimensional and contain irregular small-scale turbulence. However, when averaged, their structure is similar in cross-section to that of a vortex ring. These sampled eddies contribute greatly to local velocity fluctuations and statistical correlations. The experiments indicate a need for careful consideration of the meanings of terms such as ‘vortex’, ‘eddy’ and ‘turbulent flow’. In particular care must be taken to discriminate between the orderly, easily visualized, vortices in the transition regions of free shear flows and the less clearly visualized, but strong, large eddies in the fully developed turbulent regions.

This paper is concerned with small amplitude vortical and entropic unsteady motions imposed on steady potential flows. Its main purpose is to show that, even in this unsteady compressible and vortical flow, the perturbations in pressure p’ and velocity u can be written as p’ = ρ0D0ϕ/Dt and u = ϕ + u(I) respectively, where D0/Dt is the convective derivative relative to the mean potential flow, u(I) is a known function of the imposed upstream disturbance and ϕ is a solution to the linear inhomogeneous wave equation \[ \frac{D_0}{Dt}\bigg(\frac{1}{c^2_0}\frac{D_0\phi}{Dt}\bigg)-\frac{1}{\rho_0}\nabla\cdot(\rho_0\nabla\phi)=\frac{1}{\rho_0}\nabla\cdot\rho_0{\bf u}^{(I)} \] with a dipole source term ρ0−1 [xdtri ]ρ0u(I) whose strength ρ0u(I) is a known function of the imposed upstream distortion field. (Here c0 and ρ0 denote the speed of sound and density of the background potential flow.) This equation is used to extend Hunt's (1973) generalization of the ‘rapid-distortion’ theory of turbulence developed by Batchelor & Proudman (1954) and Ribner & Tucker (1953). These theories predict changes occurring in weakly turbulent flows that are distorted (by solid obstacles and other external influences) in a time short relative to the Lagrangian integral scale.

The theory is applied to the unsteady supersonic flow around a corner and a closed-form analytical solution is obtained. Detailed calculations are carried out to show how the expansion at the corner affects a turbulent incident stream.

The geometry of large-scale structures in the turbulent mixing layer of a moderate Reynolds number jet is deduced from measurements of the fluctuating pressure in the hydrodynamic near field. The structures are rings of concentrated vorticity that distort with downstream distance until statistical axisymmetry disappears. The rings are spaced quasi-periodically and coalesce with each other, producing larger spacings. Statistical and flow-visualization techniques are applied to free and forced jets over a range of Reynolds numbers from 5000 to 50000 to demonstrate that rings of a given spacing do not coalesce with each other until they are far enough downstream that the local mixing layer has attained some critical thickness which scales with the wavelength of the vortex pair. Wave dispersion is evaluated as a plausible mechanism for localizing the coalescences. The central feature of the model is the observation that a shear layer is dispersive to wavelengths much longer than its thickness and non-dispersive to shorter waves.

The theory presented here describes the motion of a large gas bubble rising through upward-flowing liquid in a tube. The basis of the theory is that the liquid motion round the bubble is inviscid, with an initial distribution of vorticity which depends on the velocity profile in the liquid above the bubble. Approximate solutions are given for both laminar and turbulent velocity profiles and have the form \begin{equation} U_s = U_c+(gD)^{\frac{1}{2}}\phi(U_c/(gD)^{\frac{1}{2}}), \end{equation}Us being the bubble velocity, Uc the liquid velocity at the tube axis, g the acceleration due to gravity, and D the tube diameter; ϕ indicates a functional relationship the form of which depends upon the shape of the velocity profile. With a turbulent velocity profile, a good approximation to (1) which is suitable for many practical purposes is \begin{equation} U_s = U_s + U_{s0}, \end{equation}Us0 being the bubble velocity in stagnant liquid. Published data for turbulent flow are known to agree with (2), so that in this case the theory supports a well-known empirical result. Our laminar flow experiments confirm the validity of (1) for low liquid velocities.

This paper describes in detail the overall pressure and spectral results in the outer mixing region of three annular jets. The outer mixing region can be considered as the result of the shearing of a single jet by the ambient air. The coherent structures found consist of an array of toroidal jet vortices convecting downstream in the outer mixing region. The structures tend to agree with the ones for a single jet.

A viscous-inviscid interaction is produced when a compressible laminar boundary layer encounters a corner. The correct mathematical structure for such interactions at large Reynolds number is given by the asymptotic triple-deck theory. In the present work the triple-deck equations for supersonic and hypersonic flows are solved for both compression and expansion corners. Results are presented for a range of corner angles, including separated cases, and are compared with experimental data and with finite Reynolds number calculations based on an interacting boundary-layer model.

The stability of two-dimensional convection rolls has been studied as a function of the Rayleigh number, wavenumber and variation in viscosity. The experiments used controlled initial conditions for the wavenumber, Rayleigh numbers up to 25 000 and variations in viscosity up to a factor of about 20. The parameter range of stable rolls is bounded by a hexagonal-cell regime at small Rayleigh numbers and large variations in viscosity. Otherwise, the rolls are subject to the same transitions as have already been studied in fluids of uniform viscosity. The bimodal instability leading to a stable three-dimensional pattern occurs at smaller values of the average Rayleigh number as the variations in viscosity increase. This appears to be a consequence of the low viscosity of the warm thermal boundary layer associated with the original rolls.

An experimental programme has been carried out to examine the spread of heat as a passive scalar contaminant in a turbulent shear flow. The situation involves a slightly heated two-dimensional jet expanding into a quiescent medium on one side and a uniform stream with velocity equal to that of the warm jet on the other. Thus the developed flow is a typical mixing layer with an asymmetric mean temperature profile superimposed on it. Measurements of the mean and fluctuating velocity and temperature fields show the existence of a region where the production of temperature fluctuations is negative. Spectral analysis in this zone indicates a separation of large and small wavenumber components of the cospectrum into two regimes. The sign of the high-frequency portion is consistent with gradient-transport concepts while the low-frequency component is of opposite sign. From this it is inferred that the large eddies are mainly responsible for the negative production. A mathematical model has been developed to describe the transport within this region.

The persistence of the large vortices formed at the origin of wakes and mixing layers constitutes a kind of memory of initial conditions by the turbulence. In order to study the fading of this turbulence memory, and its effect on the rate of approach to the fully developed state, two wakes with different initial conditions have been examined experimentally. The wake of a sphere was compared with the wake of a porous disk which had the same drag, but did not exhibit vortex shedding. Measurements were made of the mean and fluctuating velocities, the anisotropy of the turbulence, and the intermittency. It was found that the wake of the sphere developed self-preserving behaviour more rapidly than the wake of the disk, and that even after both wakes became self-preserving there were differences between them in the structure of the turbulence and the scale of the mean flow. From this it is concluded that the behaviour of self-preserving wakes does not depend on the drag alone, but also on the structure of the dominant eddies. Generalizing these results, it is suggested that reported differences in the value of the entrainment constant of jets, wakes, and mixing layers are due to differences in the structure of the dominant eddies, rather than differences in the type of flow.