Water Application of Suction and Oscillatory Blowing (SaOB) actuator

The current paper describes an on-going study intended to adapt the SaOB actuator for water applications. The SaOB actuator is a fluidic device that has been widely studied in air and for the first time, the actuator has been adapted and characterized in water. A working SaOB actuator was successfully adapted to water for future implementation in hydro-structures with the objective to conduct AFC in this fluid. The investigation was conducted in two steps. First, a set of 3 different sized actuators were characterized in water with a Pitot tube and Time Resolved Particle Image Velocimetry. Later the same actuators were tested in air using Hot-Wire anemometry with the purpose to compare performance in both fluids. This comparison was made by plotting the Strouhal against Reynolds number and obtaining a similar behavior for water and air, proving the feasibility of using the SaOB actuator in water and its universal feature at least in the incompressible regime.