Influence of Inlet Fluctuations on the Development of The Turbulent Two-Stream Mixing Layer

J. Tawfik, and R. Arimilli
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA
Published in 2010

The finite element method applied to the k-epsilon turbulence model is used to investigate the two-stream turbulent mixing layer. Whereas the model is known as one of the most popular of the turbulence models to date, the model has yet to be applied to the classical mixing layer problem to the best of our knowledge. A transient k-epsilon turbulence model in COMSOL is used to solve this problem. In this work, a new method for visualization of vortex-shedding is demonstrated by solving for the transient response with a uniform inlet velocity superposed with stream-wise fluctuating velocity components upon the individual streams.