Flow separation control over an airfoil using continuous alternating current plasma actuator

The flow separation control over an NACA 0015 airfoil using continuous alternating current (AC) dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma actuator is investigated experimentally and numerically. This work is intended to report some observations made from our experiment, to which little attention is paid in the previous studies, but which is thought to be important to the understanding of control of complex flow separation with AC DBD. To this end, the response of separated flow to AC plasma actuation is visualized through the time-resolved particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurement, whereas numerical simulation is carried out to complement the experiment. The flow control process at chord-based Reynolds number (Re) of 3.31 × 105 is investigated. It is found that the response of external flow to plasma forcing is delayed for up to tens of milliseconds and the delay time increases with angle of attack increasing. Also observed is that at the intermediate angle of attack near stall, the forced flow features a well re-organized flow pattern. However, for airfoil at high post-stall angle of attack, the already well suppressed flow field can recover to the massively separated flow state and then reattach to airfoil surface with the flow pattern fluctuating between the two states in an irregular manner. This is contrary to one’s first thought that the forced flow at any angles of attack will become well organized and regular, and reflects the complexity of flow separation control.