Experimental Investigation and Intelligent Optimization of Airfoil Zero-Lift Drag Reduction with Plasma Actuators

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Micro aerial vehicles flying at low speeds are becoming increasingly popular in military and daily life. Nevertheless, the short cruise time related to the poor aerodynamic efficiency of the wing at low Reynolds numbers is still a key issue. To deal with this, a spanwise plasma actuator array is used to reduce the zero-lift drag of a low-Reynolds-number airfoil, and experimental optimization of the electrical parameters is performed with intelligent algorithms. Results show that for efficient drag reduction, an unsteady unidirectional jet working mode should be preferred by the plasma actuator. In this mode, the drag reduction maps are mostly flat, and the drag reduction magnitude is insensitive to the variation of input voltage amplitude. There exists a threshold particle-observed Strouhal number (0.2) below which the drag reduction effectiveness drops sharply. As a comparison, the map of the power saving ratio shows a steep gradient, and its maximum always resides on the lower bound of duty cycle. With increasing freestream velocity, the mean drag reduction decreases monotonically. A genetic algorithm shows superior performance over surrogate-based optimization by reaching a maximum drag reduction of 40% and a peak power saving ratio of 0.7. Particle image velocimetry results reveal that there exists a laminar separation bubble on the airfoil. With plasma actuation, the transition location is shifted upstream, and the separation region is eliminated significantly. At low speeds, this pressure drag reduction exceeds the friction drag increase, resulting in a net drag decrease. However, transition-induced drag variation can only explain part of the total drag reduction, and the rest is inferred to be turbulent friction drag reduction.