Swept-wing transition control using DBD plasma actuators

In the present work, laminar flow control, following the discrete roughness elements (DRE) strategy, also called upstream flow deformation (UFD) was applied on a 45^◦ swept-wing at a chord Reynold’s number of Re_c = 2.1 · 10⁶ undergoing cross-flow instability (CFI) induced transition. Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma actuation was employed at a high frequency (f_ac = 10kHz) for this purpose. Specialized, patterned actuators that generate spanwinse-modulated plasma jets were fabricated using spray-on techniques and positioned near the leading edge. An array of DREs was installed upstream of the plasma forcing to lock the origin and evolution of critical stationary CFI vortices in the boundary layer. Two forcing configurations were investigated-in the first configuration the plasma jets were directly aligned against the incoming CF vortices while in the second the CF vortices passed between adjacent plasma jets. Infrared thermography was used to inspect transition location, while quantitative measurements of the boundary layer were obtained using particle image velocimetry. The obtained results show that the plasma forcing reduces the amplitude of stationary CF modes, thus delaying laminar-to-turbulent transition. In contrast to previous efforts [1], the plasma forcing did not introduce unsteady fluctuations into the boundary layer. The mechanism responsible for the observed transition delay appears to leverage more on localised base-flow modification rather than the DRE/UFD control strategy.