Flow characteristics of two-dimensional synthetic jets under diaphragm resonance excitation

Purpose This paper aims to experimentally study the external flow characteristic of an isolated two-dimensional synthetic jet actuator undergoing diaphragm resonance. Design/methodology/approach The resonance frequency of the diaphragm (40 Hz) depends on the excitation mechanism in the actuator, whereas it is independent of cavity geometry, excitation waveform and excitation voltage. The velocity response of the synthetic jet is influenced by excitation voltage rather than excitation waveform. Thus, this investigation selected four different voltages (5, 10, 15 and 20 V) under the same sine waveform as experiment parameters. Findings The velocity field along the downstream direction is classified into five regions, which can be obtained by hot-wire measurement. The first region refers to an area in which flow moves from within the cavity to the exit of orifice through the oscillation of the diaphragm, but prior to the formation of the vortex of a synthetic jet. In this region, two characteristic frequencies exist at 20 and 40 Hz in the flow field. The second region refers to the area in which the vortices of a synthetic jet fully develop following their initial formation. In this region, the characteristic frequencies at 20 and 40 Hz still occur in the flow field. The third region refers to the area in which both fully developed vortices continue traveling downstream. It is difficult to obtain the characteristic frequency in this flow field, because the mean center velocities (<umacron>) decay downstream and are proportional to (x/w)(-1/2) for the four excitation voltages. The fourth region reveals variations in both vortices as they merge into a single vortex. The mean center velocities (<umacron>) are approximately proportional to (x/w)(0) in this region for the four excitation voltages. A fifth region deals with variations in the vortex of a synthetic jet after both vortices merge into one, in which the mean center velocities (<umacron>) are approximately proportional to (x/w)(-1) in this region for the four excitation voltages (x/w is the dimensionless streamwise distance). Originality/value Although the flow characteristics of synthetic jets had reported for flow control in some literatures, variations of flow structure for synthetic jets are still not studied under the excitation of diaphragm resonance. This paper showed some novel results that our velocity response results obtained by hot-wire measurement along the downstream direction compared with flow visualization resulted in the classification of five regions under the excitation of diaphragm resonance. In the future, it makes valuable contributions for experimental findings to provide researchers with further development of flow control.