A review of flow control techniques and optimisation in s-shaped ducts

This paper is a review of significant studies in the complex flow physics in diffusive, s-shaped ducts, focusing on flow control methods employed to counteract the onset of separation, swirl formation, and non-uniformity of pressure at the duct exit plane. Passive, active, and hybrid flow control, along with optimisation techniques used to control the dominant flow features are discussed. According to the literature, tapered fin vortex generators and submerged vortex generators improve pressure loss and distortion by double digit percentages, and three-dimensional synthetic jets and pulsed micro-jets show greatest promise amongst active flow control devices. Plasma flow control methods have only sparsely been used in s-ducts with one study performing experiments with alternating-current dielectric-barrier-discharge plasma actuators. The importance of flow unsteadiness has been identified in the literature, with peak values as high as one order of magnitude different from the time-averaged properties. Despite this, very few flow control studies have used time-dependent solution methods to quantify the effect of flow control methods on the unsteadiness of the flow.