Characteristics of pulsed plasma synthetic jet and its control effect on supersonic flow

The plasma synthetic jet is a novel flow control approach which is currently being studied. In this paper its characteristic and control effect on supersonic flow is investigated both experimentally and numerically. In the experiment, the formation of plasma synthetic jet and its propagation velocity in quiescent air are recorded and calculated with time resolved schlieren method. The jet velocity is up to 100 m/s and no remarkable difference has been found after changing discharge parameters. When applied in Mach 2 supersonic flow, an obvious shockwave can be observed. In the modeling of electrical heating, the arc domain is not defined as an initial condition with fixed temperature or pressure, but a source term with time-varying input power density, which is expected to better describe the influence of heating process. Velocity variation with different heating efficiencies is presented and discussed and a peak velocity of 850 m/s is achieved in still air with heating power density of 5.0 × 1012 W/m3. For more details on the interaction between plasma synthetic jet and supersonic flow, the plasma synthetic jet induced shockwave and the disturbances in the boundary layer are numerically researched. All the results have demonstrated the control authority of plasma synthetic jet onto supersonic flow.