Experimental Investigation of a Synthetic Jet Array in a Laminar Channel Flow

Abstract

The paper deals with an impinging synthetic jet, namely on the case of a synthetic jet array interacting with a laminar channel flow. This arrangement can be useful in many micro-scale applications, such as cooling of micro-electronics. The flow regime in micro-scale is usually laminar with very small Reynolds numbers; therefore synthetic jet array can be used for the profile disturbance and heat transfer enhancement. The paper focuses on the low Reynolds number (in order 102). The working fluid is water and a piezoceramic transducer is used as a moving membrane in the synthetic jet actuator. Experiments are performed with four experimental methods (tin ion visualization, hot wire anemometry in constant temperature mode, laser Doppler vibrometry and particle image velocimetry) in three laboratories (at the Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands, at the Institute of Thermodynamics CAS, v.v.i. and Technical University of Liberec, both Czech Republic).