Interaction of a wall-normal synthetic jet with large scales in a turbulent boundary layer and implications for drag reduction

As a step towards realising a skin-friction drag reduction technique that scales favourably with Reynolds number, the impact of a synthetic jet on a turbulent boundary layer was explored through a study combining wind-tunnel measurements and large eddy simulations. The jet was ejected in the wall-normal direction through a rectangular slot whose spanwise dimension matched that of dominant large-scale structures in the logarithmic region to target structures of that size and smaller simultaneously. Local skin-friction reduction was observed at both $x/\delta =2$ and $x/\delta =5$ downstream of the orifice centreline, where $\delta$ is the boundary-layer thickness. At $x/\delta =2$ , the skin-friction reduction was observed to be due to the synthetic-jet velocity deficit intersecting the wall. At $x/\delta =5$ , evidence from the simulations and wind-tunnel measurements suggests that a weakening of wall-coherent velocity scales is primarily responsible for the skin-friction reduction. Local skin-friction reduction which scales favourably with Reynolds number may be achievable with the synthetic jet employed in this study. However, there are many technical hurdles to overcome to achieve net skin-friction drag reduction over the entire region of influence. For instance, regions of skin-friction increase were observed close to the orifice ( $x/\delta \lt 2$ ) and downstream of the orifice edge due to the induced motion of synthetic-jet vortical structures. Additionally, a recirculation region was seen to form during expulsion, which has implications for pressure drag on non-planar surfaces.