The effect of actuation strength on the plasma synthetic jet

The flow structures induced by plasma synthetic jet actuator were simulated based on a phenomenological model, which was realized by adding the body force source term to the Navier-Stokes equations. The simulation results indicate that, with the actuation strength increased, the vorticity near the wall adjacent to the actuator becomes larger, which yields the streamwise velocity induced by the vortex pair become larger. At the same time, the vortex core goes further away from the wall, and the vortex would be more stretched. The actuation strength has a significant influence on the streamwise velocity in the time-averaged flow field, which can be indicated by the fact that the time averaged streamwise velocity on the centerline rises from 0.4 m/s to 1.4 m/s along with the actuation strength increase from Dc ₀ to 8Dc ₀. When the actuation strength is relatively low, the half jet width increases with the actuation strength increase. However, at the situation of high actuation strength (>6Dc ₀), it remains nearly constant and has no apparentrelation with the actuation strength. The streamwise momentum flux also increases with actuation strength increase monotonically.