On the effect of active flow control on the meandering of a wing-tip vortex

Abstract

The development of a wing-tip vortex of a rectangular, square-tipped wing having a NACA 0012 airfoil at a chord Reynolds number , under the effect of synthetic jet actuation, was experimentally studied. Five control configurations were considered: case C1 with momentum coefficient and actuation frequency ; case C2 with and ; case C3 with and ; case C4 with and ; and case C5 with and . Under the most effective configuration, case C3, the vortex was stretched and appeared to be diffuse with a nearly 40 % decrease in the peak circumferential velocity and 50 % decrease in the core axial vorticity. The vortex core radius largely broadened suggesting that the lower-frequency control configuration allowed the synthetic jet to travel larger distances into the vortex bringing turbulent structures within its core resulting in increased mixing and subsequently a more diffuse vortex.