Energy efficiency and performance characteristics of plasma synthetic jet

Abstract

Based on the Joule heating effect of gas discharge in the working process of the plasma actuator, the plasma synthetic jet is simulated with a three-dimensional phenomenological model, under the assumption of local thermodynamic equilibrium plasma.The flow field evolution process of the plasma synthetic jet during a whole cycle is obtained. The results show that in the self-sustained periodical jet built by a single energy deposition, there is a maxium pulse frequency–saturated frequency which could relaize that the cavity is recovered sufficiently. Large energy deposition, small exit orifice diameter and high diameter-height ratio with the same cavity volume could induce higher speed jet, and the increase of the jet speed occurs concurrently with the decrease of the saturated frequency. During a saturated cycle, up to 16% of the mass in the cacity is expelled, but the recovery can only achieve about 90% of the initial mass in the cavity. Plasma synthetic jet actuator is supplied by a capacitive power supply at atmospheric pressure, the fractions of power that go into gas heating and jet kinetic energy are 5% and 1.6% respectively.