This paper presents an experimental investigation on flow field induced by a dielectric barrier discharge(DBD) plasma actuator with serrated electrodes in still air to further improve its flow control effectiveness. For comparison, the actuator with widely used linear electrodes was also studied. Experiments were carried out using 2D particle image velocimetry. Particular attention was given to the flow topology, discharge phenomenon, and vortex formation mechanism. Results showed that a 2D wall jet was induced by the linear actuators, whereas the plasma actuators with serrated electrode introduced a series of streamwise vorticities, which might benefit flow control(e.g., enhancing the momentum transport in the separated boundary flow). In addition, the mechanism of 3D flow topology induced by the serrated DBD actuator was analyzed in detail.
The smart fatigue load control of a large-scale wind turbine blade subject to wake effect was numerically investigated in this paper. The performances were evaluated and compared at selected typical wind speeds within the whole operational region under three turbine layout strategies, i.e., column, row and array arrangements, together with a single turbine case as reference, utilizing our newly developed aero-servo-elastic platform. It was observed that not only the blade fatigue loads but the stabilities of power and collective pitch angle were effectively controlled for all cases, especially at the highest studied hub velocity of20 m/s, leading to the averaged reduction percentages in the standard deviations of the flapwise root moment, the flapwise tip deflection and the root damage equivalent load, of about 30.0 %, 20.0 % and 20.0 %, respectively. Furthermore, the control effectiveness gradually lessened in the sequences of single, column, row and array cases, with successively increasing effective turbulence intensity,within regions II and III. The performances in region III,associated with the impaired flow separation on the blade by the effective pitching action, were much better than those in region II, related to enhanced flow detachment. In addition,at the rated wind velocity, the control for the array case was superior over other three cases, which was thought to be originated from the more pitch activities to impair the uncontrolled flow separation on the blade surface.
