Piezoelectric actuators as synthetic jets: Cavity dimension effects

Effects of dimensional cavity parameters, height, and orifice diameter, on synthetic jet peak velocities are investigated numerically and experimentally, utilizing two piezoelectric composite diaphragms, Bimorph and Thunder(R). The system is modeled using a RNG k-epsilon model with a mesh generated using a tri-pave unstructured scheme and the diaphragms are modeled as moving boundaries. The model compares within 15% for a Bimorph but underpredicts the results for Thunder(R) by more than 30%. For a Bimorph, both cavity parameters are relevant with the orifice diameter having a higher effect. For Thunder(R) however, only orifice diameter is found to be statistically significant.