Three fluidic flow control circuits are analysed so that their controlling ability and power consumption can be determined. Under certain conditions the power consumption can be minimized by judicious circuit design and it is shown that optimization depends on certain well-defined non-dimensional performance characteristics of the fluidic devices. The circuits involve unvented vortex amplifiers and bistable wall-attachment amplifiers, which are considered to operate in a few simply defined flow states. The object of this paper is to show how such calculations can be made and to show quantitatively the potentialities and limitations of currently available devices.
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