DNS of compressible pipe flow exiting into a coflow

Highlights: ► DNS conducted of turbulent pipe flow exiting into a coflow. ► Varied Mach number and coflow velocity. ► Statistics near nozzle collapse using wall-shear stress and density from upstream. ► Asymptotic theory can be used to qualitatively predict near-nozzle behaviour. ► Self-similarity of jets only found for small coflow magnitudes. - Abstract: Direct numerical simulations were conducted of a fully turbulent canonical nozzle/jet configuration. For all cases, the target Reynolds number, based on the jet velocity and diameter, was specified as 7500 and the jet Mach number and coflow Mach number were varied. Turbulence statistics at the nozzle exit are shown to collapse with fully developed turbulent pipe flow profiles when using the wall shear-stress, and in the case of higher Mach number cases also the wall density, from the fully developed flow region upstream in the nozzle. Predictions of flow variables in the near-nozzle region obtained from asymptotic theory are found to agree qualitatively with Direct Numerical Simulation data. The data from the different cases are shown to collapse in the potential core region when scaling with the appropriate mixing layer parameter while further downstream the appropriate parameter is the non-dimensional local velocity excess. For all scalings investigated, including virtual-origin correction of the streamwise axis, the case with the highest coflow magnitude did not agree well with the other cases implying that self-similarity of coflowing jets is restricted to low coflow values. Finally, it is shown that the acoustic field is resolved by the simulations making the data suitable for subsequent aeroacoustic analysis.