Implementation of Continuous Blowing and Synthetic Jet Actuators to Control the Flow Separation over a Fully Stalled Airfoil

Continuous blowing and synthetic jet actuators were implemented to investigate their effects on a fully stalled airfoil. An opening tangential to the boundary layer configuration was installed over the suction surface of the Selig-Donovan airfoil at the angle of attack of 16° and Reynolds number of 60,000. An optimization analysis was carried out to look for the optimum operational design point. Genetic algorithm, artificial neural network, and computational fluid dynamic simulations were combined to perform the optimization. Inserting location, opening diameter, velocity amplitude, and synthetic jet frequency were considered as design variables. Results indicated a significant improvement in aerodynamic characteristics, performance, and lift and drag coefficients. Using unsteady actuation caused a better improvement in aerodynamic characteristics compared to the steady case and also led to a remarkable reduction in the applied momentum coefficient. Contours of different flow field parameters were depicted for both cases and their similarities and dissimilarities were identified. Moreover, the synthetic jet actuator displayed a lower increase in the friction coefficient than the continuous blowing actuator. Therefore, it showed a higher performance improvement in comparison with the continuous blowing jet.