Experimental and numerical investigation of a self-supplementing dual-cavity plasma synthetic jet actuator

The primary issue regarding the plasma synthetic jet actuator (PSJA) is its performance attenuation at high frequencies. To solve this issue, a self-supplementing, dual-cavity, plasma synthetic jet actuator (SD-PSJA) is designed, and the static properties of the SD-PSJA are investigated through experiments and numerical simulations. The pressure measurement shows that the SD-PSJA has two saturation frequencies (1200 Hz and 2100 Hz), and the experimental results show that both the saturation frequencies decrease as the volume of the bottom cavity of the SD-PSJA increases. As the size of the supplement hole increases, the first saturation frequency increases continuously, while the second saturation frequency shows a trend of first decreasing and then increasing. Numerical simulations show that the working process of the SD-PSJA is similar to that of the PSJA, but the volume of the cavity in the SD-PSJA is smaller than that of the PSJA; the SD-PSJA can supplement air to the top cavity through two holes, thus reducing the refresh time and effectively improving the jet intensity of the actuator at high frequencies.