High-fidelity modeling of synthetic jet actuators for airfoil flow and noise control

Abstract

Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Malta, 16-18 July, 2012.

Synthetic jet actuators (SJAs) may be carefully designed to alleviate the negative impact of impinging flow non low non-uniformities on the aircraft wing performance. The current work investigates the effectiveness of SJAs for control a low low-speed airfoil unsteady aerodynamic response and acoustic radiation both for the clean upstream flow conditions and in the presence of an upstream flow disturbance. In the high fidelity numerical studies of flow and noise control of , respectively, SD7003 and Joukowski airfoils in laminar and transitional flow regimes, the actuator is modeled without its resonator cavity by imposing a simple fluctuating-velocity boundary condition at the bottom of the actuator's orifice. The orifice with of the actuator's orifice. The orifice with properly defined boundary condition is then embedded into airfoil surface for conducting high-accuracy viscous analysis of SJA-based active based active flow and noise control. Results of low Reynolds number numerical simulations indicate that the SJA effect on unsteady airfoil response appears most significant for the actuator operating in resonance with airfoil natural shedding frequency.