Free Shear Flows 2: Wakes and Mixing Layers — Lesson 6

Can you see the wakes left by ships moving on the water? Although the wakes left behind by ships are easy to visualize, most bodies traveling in a fluid leave a wake behind. This is primarily because of flow separation.

The smoke emanating from the mouth of this chimney is regarded as a turbulent round jet. But what happens to this smoke much farther from the mouth? How does it mix with the moving clouds?

This lesson is a continuation of the previous lesson on free shear flows. In this lesson, we will answer the questions posed above and learn about two additional components of free shear flows — wakes and mixing layers. We will discuss both laminar and turbulent aspects of these external flows and identify different ways of predicting their spreading rates.

Alternate video link.

Here are the corresponding handout slides for this lesson.