The Effect of Orifice Angle and Cavity Dimension on Rectangular Synthetic Jet Actuators

In the last decade, a great deal of interest has been focused on the application of synthetic jet actuators (SJA) for active flow control. SJAs delay separation by injecting vortex pairs into the cross flow and energizing the turbulent boundary layer. The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of the orifice angle on the performance of axisymmetric SJAs. The SJAs used in this experiment were composed of a piezoelectric (PZT) membrane, cavities and orifices. SJA’s with either a straight (90°) or angled (60°) orifices were characterized using hot-wire anemometry and Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). It was found that the structure of the jet flow changed depending on the angle of the orifice with differences in the resulting vortical structure observed. The peak jet speed was found to be higher for the straight orifice than for the angled orifice contradicting the analytic prediction based on cavity dimension.