Experimental and numerical investigation of a self-supplementing dual-cavity plasma synthetic jet actuator

The primary issue regarding the plasma synthetic jet actuator(PSJA)is its performance attenuation at high frequencies.To solve this issue,a self-supplementing,dual-cavity,plasma synthetic jet actuator(SD-PSJA)is designed,and the static properties of the SD-PSJA are investigated through experiments and numerical simulations.The pressure measurement shows that the SD-PSJA has two saturation frequencies(1200 Hz and 2100 Hz),and the experimental results show that both the saturation frequencies decrease as the volume of the bottom cavity of the SD-PSJA increases.As the size of the supplement hole increases,the first saturation frequency increases continuously,while the second saturation frequency shows a trend of first decreasing and then increasing.Numerical simulations show that the working process of the SD-PSJA is similar to that of the PSJA,but the volume of the cavity in the SD-PSJA is smaller than that of the PSJA;the SD-PSJA can supplement air to the top cavity through two holes,thus reducing the refresh time and effectively improving the jet intensity of the actuator at high frequencies.

Parametric study of high-frequency characteristics of plasma synthetic jet actuator

A major issue of plasma synthetic jet actuator(PSJA)is the severe performance deterioration at high working frequency.In this study,experiments and numerical simulation are combined together to investigate the influence of thermal conductivity,throat length(Lth)and discharge duration(Td)on the high-frequency characteristics of PSJA.Results show that the variation of the actuator thermal conductivity and discharge duration will not alter the saturation frequency of the actuator,whereas decreasing the throat length results in an increase of the saturation frequency.For a short-duration capacitive discharge of 1.7μs,a clear shock wave is issued from the orifice,followed by a weak jet.As a comparison,when the discharge duration is increased up to 202.6μs,a strong jet column is formed and no obvious shock wave can be visualized.Based on numerical simulation results,it becomes clear that the long-duration pulse-DC discharge is able to heat the cavity gas to a much higher temperature(3141 K)than capacitive discharge,greatly improving the conversion efficiency of the arc discharge energy to the internal energy of the cavity gas.In addition,high-speed Schlieren imaging is deployed to study the performance degradation mechanism of PSJA at high working frequency.Monitor of the exit jet grayscale indicates that as long as the saturation frequency is exceeded,the actuator becomes unstable due to insufficient refresh time.The higher the discharge frequency,the more frequently the phenomenon of‘misfires’will occur,which explains well the decaying jet total pressure at above saturation frequency.

Control of flow separation over a wing model with plasma synthetic jets

An array of 30 plasma synthetic jet actuators(PSJAs)is deployed using a modified multichannel discharge circuit to suppress the flow separation over a straight-wing model.The lift and drag of the wing model are measured by a force balance,and the velocity fields over the suction surface are captured by a particle imaging velocimetry system.Results show that the flow separation of the straight wing originates from the middle of the model and expands towards the wingtips as the angle of attack increases.The flow separation can be suppressed effectively by the PSJAs array.The best flow control effect is achieved at a dimensionless discharge frequency of F^+=1,with the peak lift coefficient increased by 10.5%and the stall angle postponed by 2°.To further optimize the power consumption of the PSJAs,the influence of the density of PSJAs on the flow control effect is investigated.A threshold of the density exits(with the spanwise spacing of PSJAs being 0.2 times of the chord length in the current research),below which the flow control effect starts to deteriorate remarkably.In addition,for comparison purposes,a dielectric barrier discharge(DBD)plasma actuator is installed at the same location of the PSJAs.At the same power consumption,4.9%increase of the peak lift coefficient is achieved by DBD,while that achieved by PSJAs reaches 5.6%.