Inflow Treatment for the Simulation of Subsonic Jets with Turbulent Nozzle Boundary Layers

The state of the boundary layer at the nozzle exit of a circular nozzle-jet configuration has an important influence on the development of the shear layer and the emitted sound. Of special interest is the acoustic near-field obtained when the nozzle exit boundary layer is fully turbulent. The turbulent inflow generation and the inflow boundary treatment are important issues to be addressed. We use the Synthetic Eddy Method (SEM) to generate a turbulent inflow which reproduces mean flow and Reynolds stress profiles of specified reference data. The spatially and temporally varying synthetic fluctuations are imposed in the simulation by a forcing term added to the governing equations which is active in a small region downstream of the inflow boundary. This forcing in combination with characteristic boundary conditions allows for passing of upstream-propagating acoustic waves and avoids an uncontrolled drift of mean-flow quantities. We employ this inflow boundary treatment for a subsonic nozzle-jet flow simulation at a Reynolds number of ～ 9500 and Mach number of 0.9. (© 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)