A laboratory investigation into the influence of a rigid vegetation on the evolution of a round turbulent jet discharged within a cross flow

• The study focuses on the effects of the vegetation on dilution processes.
• Jets are commonly identified as discharge of pollutant substances.
• The vegetation generally enhances the mixing process in main natural channels.
• There is a lack of research on the proposed environmental topics.
• The results show that the vegetation affects the jet structures.

The study of buoyant jets, those between pure jets and plumes, has been carried out with ever greater frequency over recent years due to its application in different practical engineering fields, i.e. appropriate design of outfalls for the disposal of municipal and industrial waste waters. The dispersion of waste and the related dilution of pollutants are governed by the mean-flow and turbulence characteristics of the resulting jets, which themselves depend on environmental conditions.The present study deals with how a uniform cross-stream with a channel bed surface covered by rigid emergent stems affects the behaviour of a circular turbulent buoyant jet. The time-averaged temperature and velocity fields are investigated in order to understand jet diffusion and penetration within the ambient fluid.The examination and comparison of the measured scalar and vector quantities show that the presence of emergent vegetation in the receiving environment affects both the average flow field and the jet structure, reducing the mean channel velocity, with a notable increase in jet penetration height and dilution compared to the test case without vegetation. This result is confirmed by the several vertical profiles of the mean scalar concentration and the normalized vertical velocity component along the channel centre plane. Moreover, the rigid emergent vegetation and its driven instabilities promote a distortion of the mean concentration and normalized axial velocity component profiles in the trajectory-based coordinate system.