Deep reinforcement learning for the control of airfoil flow separation

A jet closed-loop control system based on Deep Reinforcement Learning （DRL） was built, and an experimental study was carried out on the separation flow control at high angles of attack on the NACA0012 airfoil. The airfoil chord length is 200 mm and the wind speed was 10 m/s. The Reynolds number was 1.36×10⁵ based on the chord length. The jet actuator was arranged on the upper surface of the airfoil and the solenoid valve was used for stepless control. The pressure coefficient of the airfoil surface and the action output of the agent itself were taken as the observation of the agent. The pressure coefficient of the trailing edge of the airfoil was used as the reward function to train the agent. Our results showed that the trained agent successfully suppresses the flow separation at high angles of attack and the cost-effectiveness ratio is reduced by 50% compared with steady blowing. At the same time, the agent could also stabilize the pressure coefficient of the trailing edge near the target value. The state input and the change of the reward function also have different effects on the final training effect.