Early studies of synthetic jet control mainly focused on aspects such as flow separation control, stall characteristics delay and anal-ysis of the control mechanisms of two-dimensional airfoils [4–6]. Synthetic jet control studies using actual aircrafts, especially flying wing aircrafts, have mainly focused on wind tunnel tests and there are only a few studies existing in the literature. Boeing carried out a series of wind tunnel tests using synthetic jet control at low speeds for the “Stingray” demonstrator [7,8]and the results show that the synthetic jet control technology is effective for lift aug-mentation and drag reduction. Mahmood studied post-stall flow separation control under large angles of attack on a small aspect ratio flying wing configuration unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The wind tunnel test resultsshow that synthetic jet control can achieve a 15% incremental lift and a 10% resistance reduction [9]. Wang Lixin carried out a vortex control study on a small aspect ratio fly-ing wing UAV [10]. His study shows that interaction between the direct force from the vortex and the varying force from the flow field can provide the necessary roll moment for an operating air-craft; however the vortex control technique is essentially belonging to the category of macro flow control. Du Hai et al. studied the effect of plasma flow control technology on the aerodynamic mo-ment of flying wing aircrafts and measured the control effects of parameters including excitation voltage [11].
In conclusion, due to its excellent aerodynamic properties, flow control of flying wing aircraft has become a hot research topic. However, research has mainly focused on the conventional as-pects such as lift augmentation and drag reduction, while there has not been sufficient flow control research focused on improving the longitudinal stability performance of flying wing aircrafts and expanding the boundary targets of flight performance. Therefore, this paper performed a study to improve the longitudinal moment characteristics of flying wing aircraft using synthetic jet control technology, and analyzed the physical mechanism of control effi-ciency generated by the synthetic jet, and studied the effects of typical control parameters on the control efficiency. The purpose of this study is to verify the practical synthetic jet control sim-ulation technology, and lay the foundation for promoting further application research.