A modern flow control technique for reducing the drag associated with the periodic shedding of von Karman vortices in the wake of a blunt trailing edge profiled body is presented. The technique involves distributed forcing of the wake flow using an array of dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuators, with a spanwise spacing matched to the spanwise wavelength of the dominant secondary wake instability. The experiments include measurement of the velocity field in multiple vertical and horizontal planes in the wake using particle image velocimetry, as well as base pressure, at Reynolds numbers of 2000, 3000, and 5000 based on trailing edge thickness. The flow control technique causes elongation of the vortex formation region across the span, and significant reduction of the fluctuating and total drag forces, up to a maximum of 94% and 18%, respectively. The effectiveness of the flow control technique is shown to be dependent on the induced momentum coefficient. Proper orthogonal decomposition analysis is used to investigate the mechanism of interaction of the flow control technique with the wake flow. Two distinct flow regimes are observed depending on the induced momentum coefficient. The effect of the control on the wake flow structure in the first regime is similar to those observed in previous studies involving mild spanwise-periodic geometric perturbations at the trailing edge, where control leads to streamwise displacement of the vortices and a shift in shedding frequency. However, an incremental increase in the momentum coefficient leads to a second flow regime similar to those previously observed in the case of large-amplitude geometric perturbations, with an almost complete attenuation of vortex shedding in the near-wake region. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.
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