On the mechanism of bluff body flow control by pulsed plasma actuator

Abstract

The flow control performance of the pulse-actuated plasma actuator and their mechanism was investigated. To clarify the flow mechanism of the separation control on a circular cylinder when pulsed plasma actuator is applied, the characteristics of the induced jet and their influence on the separated flow were separately examined. The characteristics of the induced jet from the pulsed plasma actuator were examined from the results of jet thrust measurement and high-speed Schlieren flow visualization. The effect of the frequency of pulsed plasma actuator on the flow separation on a circular cylinder model is examined in the viewpoint if aerodynamic force and the flow field measured with time-resolved PIV at the low speed wind tunnel test. For the induced jet analysis, the strength of the induced jet is found to be widely varied with the modulation frequency. When the modulation frequency is high, over 250Hz, the thrust of the induced jet increases with the modulation frequency increased. For the separation control test, the drag is significantly dropped with increasing the modulation frequency. From these results, it turns out that the enhancement of the induced jet generated from plasma actuator in high modulation frequency regime is the main cause of the enhancement of drag reduction performance.

Recent advancements toward the understanding and control of turbulent flows (Summary of ICJWSF2013)

“…The characteristics of the jet induced by the pulsed plasma actuator on circular cylinder are examined by the results of jet thrust measurement and high-speed Schlieren flow visualization (Matsuno, et al, 2013). As a fundamental study to determine the optimal working parameters of plasma actuator, the induced flows are measured by PIV, focusing on the flow structures generated by varying the parameters of the pulse modulation (Yanagida and Muramatsu, 2013).…”