Flow control applications with synthetic and pulsed jets

In recent years, a promising approach to the control of wall bounded as well as free shear flows, using synthetic and pulsed jet actuators, has received a great deal of attention. A variety of impressive flow control results have been achieved experimentally by many researchers, including the vectoring of conventional propulsive jets, modification of aerodynamic characteristics of bluff bodies, control of lift and drag of airfoils, reduction of skin-friction of a flat-plate boundary layer, enhanced mixing in circular jets, and control of external as well as internal flow separation and of cavity oscillations. More recently, attempts have been made to simulate numerically some of these flow fields. Several of the above mentioned flow fields have been simulated numerically using the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with a turbulence model, and a limited few using Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS). In the simulations, both the simplified boundary conditions at the jet exit, as well as the details of the cavity and lip, have been included. In this article, we describe the results of simulations for five different flow fields dealing with virtual aeroshaping, thrust-vectoring, interaction of a synthetic jet with a turbulent boundary layer and control of separation and cavity oscillations. These simulations have been performed using the RANS equations in conjunction with either one- or a two-equation turbulence model.