Numerical study of eigenmode forcing effects on jet flow development and noise generation mechanisms

The effect of nonlinear interaction of instability eigenmodes on jet flow transition and its near acoustic field for a high-subsonic round jet at a Reynolds number of Re=4.5x10(5) and a Mach number of Ma=0.9 is investigated using large-eddy simulations. At the inflow, helical perturbations of azimuthal wavenumbers vertical bar n vertical bar=4,...,8 determined from linear stability theory are superimposed on a laminar base flow in order to trigger transition to turbulence. The disturbance amplitude is varied parametrically in the range from 1.5% to 4.5% of the jet exit velocity U-j. Thereby we aim to characterize sources of noise generation and, in particular, underlying mode interactions. With increasing forcing amplitude, the transitional behavior of the jet changes which affects the mean flow and also the acoustic near-field, which are both analyzed in detail. As the forcing amplitude is increased, the axial root-mean-square peak levels along the jet centerline are reduced by approximately 7%. Simultaneously, pronounced dual-peak distributions are generated along the jet lip line which are related to the localization of vortex pairings of the jet column mode. For low-amplitude excitation the azimuthal turbulent kinetic energy spectra show that the unexcited, naturally least stable axisymmetric mode n=0 and the helical mode n=1 dominate the early nonlinear regimes between z approximate to 6r(0) and 9r(0) where r(0) is the jet radius. An analysis of the Fourier mode amplitude clarifies that this energy rise is linked to the helical mode n=1. For higher forcing amplitudes, in addition to the varicose mode n=0 interactions between the excited even mode n=4 and higher azimuthal harmonics thereof dominate the azimuthal energy spectra. These differences in the early nonlinear development of the eigenmodes are found to alter the acoustic near-field. At small angles from the downstream jet axis, the peak acoustic frequency occurs at a Strouhal number based on the angular frequency omega and the jet diameter D-j of St=omega D-j/(2 pi U-j)approximate to 0.4. For low-amplitude forcing sound pressure levels are slightly enhanced which can be linked to the dominant low azimuthal wavenumbers identified in the transitional region. In the sideline direction, regardless of the excitation level, broadbanded spectra with maxima in the band 0.7 < St < 0.8 are found which is maintained at intermediate observer angles. For high forcing amplitude, however, a tonal component outside the initially excited frequency range is observed. This peak at St approximate to 0.88 can be explained by weakly nonlinear interactions of initially forced eigenmodes n=4 and n=8 together with the jet column mode.