AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Characterization of a Commercial Synthetic Jet Actuator for Air Quality Applications
Miles Abarr, Denise Mauney, Jean Hertzberg, LUPITA MONTOYA, University of Colorado, Boulder
Abstract Number: 626 Working Group: Indoor Aerosols
Abstract About 40 percent of the energy used in the U.S. is associated with buildings and heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems account for about 25 percent of the energy used by buildings. Conventional centralized HVAC systems controlled by thermostats are usually installed in selected spaces of a building but often provide sub-optimum environmental quality solutions. Airflow supplied by centralized systems may also be blocked by cubicle partitions, cabinets and furniture resulting in less efficient removal of heat and contaminants within the building. In the study reported here, a commercial electromagnetic synthetic jet actuator (SJA) was characterized to determine its flow patterns and sphere of influence within a room. A comparison was also made to a computer fan with a similar power level. The purpose of this work is to investigate the potential application of this commercial SJA for indoor air quality control and its limitations for such application. These experiments showed that the SJA uses a small power input to impact the airflow far downstream (over 1 m) from the jet exit. Further, while SJA showed less flow output than the fan in this study, it had significantly greater dynamic pressure per unit energy, which may prove valuable for directing the flow within a room.