Effect of varying frequency of a synthetic jet on flow separation over an airfoil

Abstract

An experimental investigation on the effects of the synthetic jet actuator (SJA) was conducted on a National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics 0025 airfoil in a low-speed recirculating wind tunnel at a chord Reynolds number of 100 000 and at an angle of attack 12°. Particle image velocimetry was used to visualize the flow separation for the uncontrolled baseline flow, and the flow attachment for the SJA controlled flows. The location of the SJA was at −1.3% from the separation point, and a blowing ratio of 0.8 was chosen for this study. The blowing ratio proved to be effective in suppressing the separation of the flow. The reduced frequency (Ste) was varied between 1, 2, 14, and 58. The momentum bursts from the SJA based on the reduced frequency determined the effectiveness of the control method. The Reynolds stresses and turbulence production decreased dramatically with increasing frequency up to the shear layer frequency (Ste= 14), but further excitation (Ste= 58) resulted in a regain of turbulence levels. Proper orthogonal decomposition was performed which showed that the low frequency operations globally affect the modes in the shear layer while the high frequency operations are confined to the airfoil surface.