Modeling Synthetic Jets for Low-Re Airfoil Unsteady Flow Control

Abstract

Synthetic jet actuators (SJAs) may be carefully designed to alleviate the negative impact of impinging flow non-uniformities on the aircraft wing unsteady aerodynamic response. The current study investigates the effectiveness of SJAs for active control of unsteady flow over SD7003 low-Re airfoil in presence of a high-amplitude upstream flow disturbance characterized by a sharp-edge gust. In the adopted numerical procedure, the actuator's dimensional scaling and excitation frequency effects are first examined for a specific SJA configuration using a Lumped Element Model. The next step employs a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes analysis to determine simple fluctuating-velocity boundary condition at the bottom of the actuator's orifice. The orifice with the properly defined boundary condition is then embedded into the airfoil surface for conducting high-accuracy viscous analysis of active flow control during gust-airfoil interaction process. Results of numerical simulations indicate that the SJA positive effe...