Experimental data are presented from 138 synchronized channels of hot-wire anemometry in an investigation of the large-scale, or coherent, structures in a high Reynolds number fully developed, turbulent axisymmetric shear layer. The dynamics of the structures are obtained from instantaneous realizations of the streamwise velocity field in a single plane, x/D = 3, downstream of a round jet nozzle. The Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) technique is applied to an ensemble of these realizations to determine optimal representations of the velocity field, in a mean-square sense, in terms of an orthogonal basis. The coefficients of the orthogonal functions, which describe the temporal evolution of the POD eigenfunctions, are determined by projecting instantaneous realizations of the velocity field onto the basis.

Evidence is presented to show that with a partial reconstruction of the velocity field, using only the first radial POD mode, the large-scale structure is objectively educed from the turbulent field. Further, it is shown that only five azimuthal Fourier modes (0,3,4,5,6) are necessary to represent the evolution of the large-scale structure. The results of the velocity reconstruction using the POD provide evidence for azimuthally coherent structures that exist near the potential core. In addition to the azimuthal structures near the potential core, evidence is also found for the presence of counter-rotating, streamwise vortex pairs (or ribs) in the region between successive azimuthally coherent structures as well as coexisting for short periods with them. The large-scale structure cycle, which includes the appearance of the ring structure, the advection of fluid by the ribs in the braid region and their advection toward the outside of the layer by a following ring structure, repeats approximately every one integral time scale. One surprising result was that the most spatially correlated structure in the flow, the coherent ring near the potential core which ejects fluid in the streamwise direction in a volcano-like eruption, is also the one with the shortest time scale.