An experimental investigation has been carried out to clarify large discrepancies among previous reports about the evolution of turbulent plane jet. Premising that the evolution of the flow depends on the high order initial conditions, the near field of the plane jet were measured for three different initial conditions.
Rate of jet widening and center-line mean velocity decay show evidence of systematic dependence on initial turbulent intensity. The decay rate of center-line mean velocity and rate of jet widening are high when the initial turbulent intensity is high. The center-line peak turbulence intensity increases with increasing the initial turbulent intensity. The convection velocity of the large scale coherent structure is slower when the initial turbulent intensity is higher.
These results show that the mean and turbulence quantities in the near field of a plane jet are strong functions of the turbulence characteristics of the initial flow.
