Finite difference solution of a Newtonian jet swell problem

A finite difference technique has been developed to study the Newtonian jet swell problem. The streamfunction and vorticity were used as dependent variables to describe the jet flow. The boundary‐fitted co‐ordinate transformation method was adopted to map the flow geometry into a rectangular domain. The standard finite difference method was then applied for solving the flow equations. The location of the jet free surface was updated by the kinematic boundary condition, and an adjustable parameter was included in the free‐surface iteration. We could obtain numerical solutions for the Reynolds number as high as 100, and the differences between the present study and previous finite element simulations on the jet swell ratio are less than 5%.