Numerical simulations of a sweeping jet actuator

Active flow control (AFC) technology is playing an important role in aerospace applications to control separation and improve the aerodynamic performance. This paper describes the CFD simulations of a sweeping jet actuator used in AFC using the commercial CFD software ANSYS Fluent. Compressible Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations are solved using the k-ɛ and SST k-ω turbulence models for the two-dimensional models of the actuator. Three-dimensional simulations are performed using the Large-eddy simulation (LES), the delayed detached-eddy simulation (DDES) and recently developed Wray – Agarwal (WA) one-equation turbulence model. Both two-dimensional and three-dimensional results are compared with the experimental data and conclusions are drawn for the turbulence modeling and numerical methodology for obtaining the most accurate and efficient simulation.