A novel optimal design for an application-oriented synthetic jet actuator

The evaluation indicator for the performance of a synthetic jet actuator (SJA) is well-defined because of its various applications, which require optimal design to improve its performance and extend its field of application. This paper presents a novel approach to the optimal design of an SJA applied to enhance fuel/air mixture. It optimizes the combination of an actuator’s geometric parameters by selecting the strength of vortex pairs as the evaluation indicator, coupled with orthogonal experiments and analysis of variance (AOV). The results indicate that slot width is the most notable factor influencing the strength of vortex pairs, followed by cavity height and slot depth. The optimal value of the strength of vortex pairs increases by 32.5% over the experimental data of the base case, and more than 8.4% compared with the simulation results of the orthogonal experiments. It is concluded that the optimal method can effectively improve the performance of an SJA applied in mixing enhancement, reducing the test numbers and the associated design cycle and cost.