Numerical simulation on plasma circulation control airfoil

A novel plasma circulation control technique is proposed to overcome the disadvantage of conventional jet circulation control about the requirement for air source. By employing the plasma actuator on the trailing edge of the airfoil, the plasma-induced wall jet is tangential to the airfoil surface and served as Coanda blowing jet, which makes the trailing-edge detachment point migrate to the lower surface of the airfoil. In this way, the circulation and the lift of airfoil are directly controlled by the plasma actuator. The effectiveness of plasma circulation control on the aerodynamic characteristics improvement of NCCR 1510-7067N airfoil is demonstrated by solving the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations. The plasma actuator is modeled with a phenomenological model by adding the body force source terms to the governing equations. The results indicate that the efficiency of plasma circulation control for lift augmentation is superior to that of conventional jet circulation control method. The lift augmentation efficiency after the location optimization reaches Delta C-L/C-mu = 134.86, which is much higher than the maximum lift augmentation efficiency 80 for conventional jet circulation control. The optimal location for the plasma actuator in plasma circulation control is downstream of the boundary-layer separation point with proper distance, where the plasma actuator makes the separated shear layer reattach to the airfoil surface and delays the trailing-edge stagnation by Coanda effect.