A comparative study on post-stall flow separation control mechanism of steady and unsteady plasma actuators

Abstract

In order to improve the aerodynamic performance of the wing at post-stall conditions, the experimental comparative investigations on the flow separation control over an ONERA 212 airfoil using steady and unsteady plasma actuators are carried out at Reynolds number of 3.1 × 105. The duty cycle ratio is fixed at 80%, and the non-dimensional unsteady frequency F+ is varied from 0.04 to 1. The lift coefficients are increased by 39.6% and 66%, respectively, after steady and unsteady operations (F+ = 0.08) at an angle of attack of 18°, which indicates that the unsteady actuation is more efficient than steady operation. Meanwhile, the study provides new insight into understanding the post-stall separation flow controlling mechanism. First, different from the general view that the injection of momentum is the controlling mechanism of steady operation, flow control using the steady actuation experiences four stages, namely, flow separation, promoting the instability of the separated shear layer to produce large-scale spanwise vortices, flow re-attachment, and the continuous generation of small-scale vortices in the separated shear layer. Second, flow control with the unsteady operation consists of several quasi-periodic flow processes. Each quasi-cycle is composed of three stages, namely, flow separation, promoting the separation of shear layer instability to produce large-scale spanwise vortices, and flow re-attachment. The off-time of the plasma actuator plays an important role in realizing the control effect of the unsteady actuation, and an effective strategy to promote the control effect of the unsteady operation is proposed based on the propagation time of the induced spanwise vortex.