Review of experimental data on incompressible turbulent round jets

This article reviews measurements for the canonical flow: incompressible turbulent round jets issuing into a large, ideally infinite, quiescent domain. The available far-field data on mean velocity, momentum-flux conservation, Reynolds stresses and triple fluctuation correlations are presented. The budget equations for turbulent kinetic energy and for the individual Reynolds stresses are shown, including different formulations for dissipation and pressure-velocity correlations. Evidence of the persistence of source conditions in the self-preserving far field is observed in several cases. This article analyses and compares several data sets, obtained at different levels of detail, against analytical constraints, discusses limitations and provides insights aided by reference to recent numerical work. It is hoped that this will prove useful in guiding future experiments and numerical test cases, where complete details of the jet configuration are required for validation and comparison. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.