Flow in the peripheral zone of a freely expanding axisymmetric ideal-gas jet (Q1105452)

When an ideal gas flows from a nozzle into a vacuum a substantial part of the jet is occupied by the peripheral zone in which the angle of inclination of the velocity vector W to the axis of symmetry is close to or exceeds \(\pi\) /2. The known solutions for the far field are unsuitable for describing the jet, since they are valid only at relatively small values of \(\theta\). In this study the author obtains an analytic solution describing in explicit form the shape of the streamlines and the distribution of the parameters in the peripheral zone of a jet flowing into a vacuum from a nozzle with an arbitrary parameter distribution in the exit section. At the nozzle edge the solution describes Prandtl-Mayer flow. As the radial coordinate tends to infinity, the streamlines tend to asymptotes whose angle of inclination depends on the distribution of the parameters in the nozzle exit section, and the local Mach numbers increase without bound.