Response of a circular cylinder wake to a symmetric actuation by non-thermal plasma discharges

In this study, the flow past a circular cylinder is manipulated by two plasma discharges placed on both sides of the model (at ±50°). A parametric investigation by force balance is conducted to define the sensitivity of the flow field to unsteady perturbations imparted by plasma actuators (dielectric barrier discharge) at 15.6 m/s (Re _D = 40,000). Effects of simple sinusoidal waveform, burst modulation and amplitude modulation are compared for low-frequency excitations. Regardless of the excitation mode, the cylinder experiences a large increase in the drag coefficient. The larger drag increase is observed for excitation related to the lock-on regime. Fast PIV measurements and triple decomposition by proper orthogonal decomposition are performed to extract the dynamical changes in the cylinder wake and to discriminate the control effects on the coherent and fluctuating turbulence. As expected, the control principally acts on the coherent flow structures. When forced, the vortices form closer to the base of the cylinder regardless of the actuation mode. This results in the drag increase observed by force measurements. The effectiveness of burst modulation is also due to the suppression of irregular shedding that is observed in the natural flow sequence and to a high level of correlation between the upper and lower vortex shedding. Finally, flow visualizations indicate that similar results can be obtained at higher Reynolds number (Re _D = 128,000, 50 m/s).