STUDY ON EXPERIMENTS FOR SUPPRESSING WINGTIP VORTICES WITH PLASMA

The wind tunnel experiment on suppressing wingtip vortices (WTV) through adding energy with DBD plasma has been conducted in the paper. The WTV flow field of a swept wing has been visualized by PIV and the aerodynamic forces of a rectangular wing have been measured, in the condition of using three different kinds of plasma actuators respectively. The results show that the WTV may be suppressed and the separation on the upper wingtip surface may be delayed because the energy of the vortex induced by the plasma (VIP) is added into the flow field, which increases the lift and the ratio of lift to drag at a small angle of attack (AOA) effectively. Even at large AOA, the effect of plasma still appears. The effects are related to the structures of the plasma actuators. It can be obtain better results to suppress the WTV through optimizing the design of the plasma actuators and choosing the appropriate placement to install the actuators on wingtip surface.