The turbulent mixing layer with an asymmetrical distribution of temperature

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

An experimental programme has been carried out to examine the spread of heat as a passive scalar contaminant in a turbulent shear flow. The situation involves a slightly heated two-dimensional jet expanding into a quiescent medium on one side and a uniform stream with velocity equal to that of the warm jet on the other. Thus the developed flow is a typical mixing layer with an asymmetric mean temperature profile superimposed on it. Measurements of the mean and fluctuating velocity and temperature fields show the existence of a region where the production of temperature fluctuations is negative. Spectral analysis in this zone indicates a separation of large and small wavenumber components of the cospectrum into two regimes. The sign of the high-frequency portion is consistent with gradient-transport concepts while the low-frequency component is of opposite sign. From this it is inferred that the large eddies are mainly responsible for the negative production. A mathematical model has been developed to describe the transport within this region.