Miniaturization of Suction and Oscillatory Blowing Actuator Array in Water

Expanding the range of technical feasibility for fluidic actuator operation can open doors to new applications in flow control research and applications across platforms and media. A proven actuator concept is adapted to provide steady suction and oscillatory blowing in both water and air using the same geometry. The scale of the actuator is reduced to 30% scale from legacy air actuator design to address the challenge of miniaturization. The current design, as 3D printed, attains an actuator throat width of 0.97 mm. At the current scale, typical actuation frequencies of 10 to 50 Hz in water and 20 to 150 Hz in air for isolated actuator tests considered. It was shown that without additional modification, the actuator can be transitioned from in air to water operation and vice versa. Therefore, enabling one design to meet flow control needs for small-scale vehicles and tight installations. The actuators were incorporated into phase-locked, synchronized arrays and exhibited performance comparable to isolated actuator tests. The current geometric parameters are presented with a collection of test data from air and water. The test results are discussed in the context of a pre-defined objective function for desired performance parameters.