Detailed experimental study of a highly compressible supersonic turbulent plane mixing layer and comparison with most recent DNS results: “Towards an accurate description of compressibility effects in supersonic free shear flows”

• We performed a careful experiment on a highly compressible mixing layer.
• We validated the most recent DNS with the present results.
• We discuss some aspects of the thermodynamics of the turbulent flow.
• We performed a comparison between a computed and a measured turbulent kinetic energy budget.

A compressible supersonic mixing layer at convective Mach number (Mc) equal to 1 has been studied experimentally in a dual stream supersonic/subsonic wind-tunnel. Laser Doppler Velocimetry (L.D.V.) measurements were performed making possible a full estimation of the mean and turbulent 3D velocity fields in the mixing layer. The Reynolds stress tensor was described. In particular, some anisotropy coefficients were obtained. It appears that the structure of the Reynolds tensor is almost not affected by compressibility at least up to Mc = 1.The turbulent kinetic energy budget was also experimentally estimated. Reynolds analogies assumptions were used to obtain density/velocity correlations in order to build the turbulent kinetic energy budget from LDV measurements. Results have been compared to other experimental and numerical results. Compressibility effects on the turbulent kinetic energy budget have been detected and commented. A study about thermodynamics flow properties was also performed using most recent DNS results experimentally validated by the present data. A non-dimensional number is then introduced in order to quantify the real effect of pressure fluctuations on the thermodynamics quantities fluctuations.