On the Stability of a Laminar Wall Jet with Heat Transfer

The hydrodynamic stability of a low speed, plane, non-isothermal laminar wall jet at a constant temperature boundary condition was investigated theoretically and experimentally. The mean velocity and temperature profiles used in the stability analysis were obtained by implementing the Illingworth–Stewartson transformation that allows one to extend the classical Glauert solution to a thermally non-uniform flow. The stability calculations showed that the two unstable eigenmodes coexisting at moderate Reynolds numbers are significantly affected by the heat transfer. Heating is destabilizing the flow while cooling is stabilizing it. However, the large-scale instabilities associated with the inflection point of the velocity profile still amplify in spite of the high level of the stabilizing temperature difference. The calculated stability characteristics of the wall jet with heat transfer were compared with experimental data. The comparison showed excellent agreement for small amplitudes of the imposed perturbations. The agreement is less good for the phase velocities of the sub-harmonic wave and this is attributed to experimental difficulties and to nonlinear effects.