Jet forking driven by pipe tone

Abstract

The present work deals with an experimental investigation of flow of air through a square-edged circular orifice at the downstream end of a circular duct. Self-excited acoustic oscillations at the natural duct modes are observed for certain flow velocities when the orifice is sufficiently thick. For a specific Reynolds number based on the orifice diameter and the mean jet velocity (9150<Re<9850), the jet forks into two trains, with the alternating vortices falling into the same branch of the forked train. Whereas this phenomenon has been reported earlier to have occurred when the density ratio of the jet is less than 0.72, the present results show that it is possible for a jet having the same density as the ambient atmosphere. The jet forking is coincident with jump in the acoustic frequency from one natural acoustic mode to another with comparable amplitudes of both the modes.