Behavior of Synthetic Jet in Cross Flow at Low Reynolds Number

An experimental investigation to obtain the three-dimensional flow structure of the synthetic jet in low Reynolds number cross flow was conducted for the purpose of examining the effective method of vortex generation for flow control. Jet orifice diameter was 0.5 mm, and Reynolds number of the cross flow based on channel height was 650. The phase-averaged three-dimensional flow structure of synthetic jet and a continuous jet for the comparison with the synthetic jet were measured by scanning stereoscopic PIV. It was found that the synthetic jet generated the hairpin vortex. Although the shape of the longitudinal vortex pair of synthetic jet in cross flow (SJCF) is similar to that of continuous jet in cross flow (JICF), the maximum vorticity of SJCF remains higher than that in JICF in the downstream.