A detailed numerical study was performed to investigate the effect of active control methods based on Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) plasma actuators on the round turbulent jet. Eight control devices were placed inside the nozzle and operated with continuous or intermittent configurations at the jet preferred frequency, St_D=0.3.

Based on a cartesian mesh and 6th order compact finite difference schemes for the spatial discretisation, the massively parallelisable flow solver Incompact3d was used for turbulent-resolving simulations at a Reynolds number of 460,000. Several features are implemented including a numerical boundary layer trip inside the nozzle to promote turbulence in the boundary layer and an Immersive Boundary Method (IBM) to include the nozzle inside the domain.

Visualisations of the jet flow showed coherent structures present in the near field, while the coherence function was used to analyse their behaviour and frequency. Using statistical data, the potential core length and the jet spread were calculated. A passive scalar variable was used to deduce the mixing in the flow. The entrainment was determined using energy and momentum considerations. Finally, the energy spectra at certain locations inside the flow revealed further details on the flow behaviour.

The results showed a higher turbulent kinetic energy in the near field of the controlled cases and lower in the far field, while the energy content being redistributed to mainly the actuator frequency and its harmonics. The mixing and the entrainment in the flow improved, while the potential core length decreased and the jet spread increased. Overall, the DBD actuators have shown to be promising for jet control.