Difference between Shear Layer and Mixing Layer:

When two parallel streams of fluids meet at an interface with a velocity difference a
shear layer is formed. By definition a shear layer is a layer of flow where a shear or
velocity gradient exists. Going by this, boundary layer is also a form of shear layer. But
in boundary layer the momentum transport is affected by a solid interface and viscous
forces are dominant up to some distance. In case of a shear layer forming at a parallel
fluid flow interface the viscous forces are not dominant and the flow is dominated by
turbulent transport of momentum. This layer is sometimes called mixing layer also. But
some authors call this fluid interface shear layer as mixing layer when the mixing of two
species is involved, e.g., mixing of two parallel streams of two different gases at
different velocities.

Chapter 3: Shear Layer Control

Free Shear Layers: jets
Lets begin by looking at the structure of a subsonic jet issuing from a
carefully-designed nozzle into the atmosphere.

The potential core is where the velocity is still pretty much the exit velocity.
In the mixing layer, there is a shear, which results in "vorticity".

Obviously, the potential core is considered to be a region where there is no

vorticity. In regions where there is shear, there is vorticity. This can be seen by
expanding the cross-product definition above:

Where there are gradients of velocity perpendicular to the velocity direction,

there is shear. The mixing layer thickness is approximately 0.2x to 0.25x,
where x is the distance downstream of the nozzle exit.

A plot of the velocity component parallel to the axis, along the axis, would
look as follows. In the potential core, the velocity can chance if the external
pressure changes, as for example, for a jet inside a duct of changing crosssection. Otherwise, there would be no change inside the potential core.
Beyond the potential core, the jet slows down through mixing and momentum
exchange with the outside flow: the influence of the jet spreads outwards,
while the influence of the outside is felt at the axis.

Why does mixing between streams occur when there is shear?

Due to instabilities of the shear layer, some disturbances will amplify and form
vortical structures, where the shear layer "rolls up": the inner portion being

composed of fluid moving faster than the outer portions. These vortical
structures merge and form large coherent structures, which are big enough to
go far out into each stream. Thus, fluid which originated in each stream gets
"transported" far out into the other stream. This is called "convective
transport", to distinguish it from the much slower process of molecular
diffusion across boundaries. When convective transport occur, large "packets"
of fluid, containing zillions of molecules, get flung far out into each stream
from the other.
Now these large-scale structures achieve transport, but this is not enough to
complete the mixing. Inside the large-scale structures, there are rolled-up
shear layers. These again form smaller vortical structures, and so on down to
much smaller scales. Thus, many levels of shear layers occur. At the smallest
levels, there are tiny vortical structures, with relatively large contact area
between fluid that originated in the two streams. At these levels, thorough
mixing is occurring: the two fluids are getting to be indistinguishable. Thus, the
transport is achieved through the large-scale coherent structures, but the
mixing actually occurs through the fine-scale structures.
As the Reynolds number increases, the variety of size scales increases, and
probably the smallest scales get smaller, so mixing is promoted.
The concept of mixing and transport can be applied not only to chemical
composition ("species transport"), but also to mass and momentum. The
thickening of a boundary layer is due to "momentum transport: think of it as
the outer lanes of traffic slowing down because the inner lanes are slowing
down. A fast car from the outer lane zipping into the inner, slow-moving lane,
is "mass transport".
Control of Jets
Velocity components can be written as the sum of the time-averaged (or
mean), the random fluctuation about the mean, and the fluctuation due to
coherent structures (which are not quite random).

If we are able to control the jet, we should be able to change the length of the potential
core, and the extent of the mixing layer.

Supersonic vs. Subsonic Jets

Shown below is an underexpanded supersonic jet, coming out of a
convergent-divergent nozzle. As the jet comes out of the exit, it expands
because the outside pressure is less than the nozzle exit pressure. The flow at
the edge turns, sending out Prandtl-Meyer expansion waves. Beyond this, the
"slip line" bordering the jet flow is a line across which the velocity changes
sharply, but the static pressure is the same. This "slip line" is where the shear
layer develops. At the axis (or plane of symmetry if its a 2-D planar jet), more
P-M expansions go outward as the flow expands further. When these
expansion waves reach the outer boundary, the pressure becomes lower than
the outside, forcing the flow to turn back in so that the pressure stays
unchanged across the slip line. This inward turn and pressure rise occurs
across an oblique shock. This process continues until a normal shock occurs
and the flow becomes completely subsonic, spreads out and slows down.

Supersonic jets contain shocks and expansions. We all know that in

supersonic flow, information cannot propagate upstream, so what you do
downstream cannot affect what happens upstream. But note that the mixing
layer contains subsonic flow. So here, information can go back upstream! This
causes phenomena which can be explained using "feedback". It also opens
up opportunities for controlling such jets. Now lets look closely at the shear
layer.

Instability Wave:
A disturbance which amplifies in a shear layer can be described as an
instability wave. If you monitor velocity fluctuations at a few fixed points in
space, what you see will be a change in velocity which moves downstream.
This similar to having 3 police cars stationed at different point aclong the
Interstate: each feels a pressure wave and a gust of wind as something red
flashes by, the ones further down the road feel this a few seconds after the
ones stationed up the road. On the other hand, if you change your
coordinates to a system which moves at the speed of the convecting
structures, you will see what appears to be a vortex: something going round

and round. Thus, the police car which moves at the speed of the red flash
sees a Corvette, whose shape remains constant in time. In the case of fluid
structures, note that the structures move at a speed different from that of the
fluid itself: thus its never the same fluid molecules that are spinning around
inside the coherent structure. Instead, fluid goes in and out of the structure
continuously. This is very important to remember when one looks at, for
example, smoke flow visualization of vortices: the smoke moves at a speed
different from that of the vortex. Now you see why we refer to these structures
as "waves": they are disturbances propagating like waves through the fluid.
We can associate a "wavelength", "wavenumber" "frequency" etc. with these
structures.
These structures are also referrred to as "Kelvin-Helmholtz instability".
Consider what happens when the jet is axisymmetric: these structures would
extend all round the jet. So they can be considered to be like: "Vortex Rings",
similar to what we see when someone is trying to impress everyone by
blowing smoke rings. Smoke rings are vortical structures developing in the
shear layer of a suddenly-accelerated jet flow, and they remain somewhat
stable because the jet continues to accelerate upwards due to buoyancy, so
there is continuous shear.

Wave number: Tell us about changes with distance.

Wave # k

= 2p/l = w/c

where c is propagation speed of the wave (or structure)

l is wavelength. w

is 2pf , and

f is frequency (# per unit time, cycles per

second)
Wavelength changes due to vortex pairing, among other things.

FREQUENCY-DOMAIN CONCEPTS

Many things which look hopelessly complicated in the time domain can be
expressed with beautiful simplicity in the frequency domain. To see this,
consider the problem of describing something which goes up and down, in a
sinusoidal fashion, several times a second. Once we recognize that it does
repeat itself periodically, it becomes simple to describe it. We describe it by
one frequency, the amplitude, and maybe a phase reference. These are fixed.
Extending this, we can try to describe complicated-looking variations as sums
of several simple periodic functions, with different amplitudes. We can
describe these as a series of terms, involving sine and cosine functions of a
fundamental frequency and its multiples. This is the concept of a Fourier
Series. A few assumptions are implicit here. One is that "linear superposition
is valid".
We will see that operations involving "convolution integrals" can be reduced to
simple multiplication (of complex numbers) in the frequency domain. There
are several such concepts, which help us visualize relations between
variables.
"Spectrum" (plural: spectra)
Refers to the distribution of the energy of fluctuations as a function of
frequency.
Example: Autospectrum of velocity.
The autospectrum is really the "auto-spectral density function, integrated over
finite intervals of frequency". Its units are "velocity-squared per interval of
frequency". In other words, it is a measure of fluctuation energy (per unit
mass) of the property which is being described: the velocity. The word "auto"
refers to the fact that it is a spectral density function obtained as the product of
the property with itself, i.e,, velocity times velocity. In contrast, there can be
"cross-spectral density functions", for example, the product of velocity with
pressure, or pressure with density, etc.
Consider a velocity measurement at a point, as a function of time.

This variation can be supposed to be built up of various sine and cosine

waves, of different frequencies and amplitudes. This is the idea of a Fourier
Series. Conversely, we can "sample" this variation for some time, and then
break it up into the various frequencies, and compute the amplitudes at each
frequency. This is done by taking the "Fourier Transform" of the sample of the
signal. If we do this a number of times, and average the result, it will probably
all cancel out, because we have no control about the phase of the sines and
cosine waves as we begin each sample. That is, some samples will have
velocity going up while other will have velocity going down, at the same parts
of the sample. Instead, however, if we square the fluctuation, we can avoid
this problem. We can find the average "energy" (i.e., something proportional to
the square of the amplitude) in each frequency interval. This is the process of
constructing a spectrum. Below we see how these "spectra" are used to
discover the various interesting features buried in what looks like a random
fluctuating flow:

Example of a Periodic or Narrow-Band fluctuation occurring in a turbulent flow:

The spectrum shows a sharp peak in a narrow band of frequencies: this
means that there is something varying almost like a sine wave (nearly
constant frequency).

Below, we see a spectrum where there are several frequencies of instability

waves seen: the fundamental and several harmonics.

Below is the broad-band spectrum of turbulent flow: there is energy at every

frequency, because there just so many different kinds of fluctuations
occurring.

Spatial Instability
A spatial instability is a disturbance which grows as it goes downstream.
Below is shown a jet, in which instabilities grow as they go downstream,
eventually resulting in total turbulence. If you place a hot-film probe in the
shear layer just outside the potential core, you might see the narrow-band
peaks of the instability waves, superposed on the turbulent spectrum. If your
sensor is shifted downstream, you will see that the frequency of this instability
wave has decreased, while the amplitude has increased. Out in the fullyturbulent zone, it will be hard to distinguish any spectral peak on top of the
broad-band turbulence.

Excitation of coherent structures

Control or excitation of a shear layer can be described using the frequency,
amplitude and "receptivity". Receptivity refers to how a flow "receives" the
excitation. This concept applies to flows over airfoils (wall-bounded shear
layers) as well as flows coming out of jet nozzles (free shear layers). The
figures below show speakers blasting out sound at carefully selected
frequencies, right close to the points of maximum receptivity. In the case of the
jet exit, the receptivity is maximum in the immediate vicinity of the exit edge. In
the case of an airfoil, its harder to decide such a point: if the flow is at the
point of separating from the surface and forming a free shear layer, then
receptivity would be maximum at the beginning of the shear layer.

Receptivity is usually highest at the jet exit plane edge.

Excitation frequency for a jet is a function of the size of the shear layer, which
is proportional to the jet diameter.
Strouhal number fD/U is around 0.3 to 0.5 for jets, and 0.42 to 0.48 for laminar
jets.
Example: D = 2", approx. 50 mm.
U = 100 fps = 30.48 m/s
f = 293 Hz.
Screech Tones in Supersonic Jets and Their Suppression: click here.

References:
Laurence, J.C. (NASA TR 1292, 1956)
Davies, Fisher, Barrett (Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Vol. 15, pt. 3, 1963, p. 337-367.)
Bradshaw, Ferris, Johnson, Journal of Fluid Mechanics.