Prediction of Transient and Steady Turbulent Free Subsonic Air Jets

Velocity distributions and related parameters of　transient and steady, turbulent air jets issuing under atmospheric conditions at Mach 0.14, 0.33 and 0.5 have been predicted using Navier-Stokes(N-S) equations for compressible flow and incompressible flow independently with the k-ε model. The closeness and consistence of the results predicted by the N-S equations for compressible and incompressible flows as well as with relevant measurement or similar prediction show that the incompressible flow assumption for at least some subsonic gas jets issuing at velocities higher than Mach 0.3, the general limit for incompressible fluid flow, can be reasonably accurate particularly in the main fully developed flow region. This suggests that the divergence term in source terms of the momentum, turbulence energy and its dissipation rate equations have negligible effects for some seemingly compressible high speed, subsonic free gas jets. The computation time is reduced by at least 18 % when incompressible flow assumption is used.