Influence of Jet-Grid Turbulence on Flat Plate Turbulent Boundary Layer Flow and Heat Transfer

The influence of high mainstream turbulence on turbulent boundary layer flow and heat transfer is experimentally investigated for length Reynolds numbers between 4 × 10⁴ and 1.5 × 10⁶. The high mainstream turbulence is produced by a round tube grid with uniform jet injection. Injected air is blown in either an upwind or downwind direction at a controllable flow rate. A flat plate test section instrumented with foil thermocouples is located downstream from the jet grid. The turbulence intensity decay and length scale growth along the test plate, the mean velocity and temperature profiles across the boundary layer, and surface heat transfer distribution are measured. The results show that the grid with downwind injection produces a slightly higher turbulence intensity and a smaller length scale than the grid with upwind injection. A higher turbulence intensity and a smaller length scale further enhance the surface heat transfer coefficient. The jet-induced high turbulence does not alter the downstream velocity and temperature profiles in their logarithmic regions, but the wake regions are lower than the zero turbulence profiles. The Reynolds analogy factor, the augmented friction factor, and the augmented Stanton number are higher than those from existing correlations when the jet grid turbulence intensity is greater than 6 percent.