Airflow acceleration performance of asymmetric surface dielectric barrier discharge actuators at different exposed needle electrode heights

Abstract

The use of plasma, created by asymmetric surface dielectric barrier discharge (ASDBD), as aerodynamic actuators to control airflows, has been of widespread concern over the past decades. For the single ASDBD, the actuator performance is dependent on the geometry of actuator and the produced plasma. In this work, a new electrode configuration, i.e., a row of needle, is taken as an exposed electrode for the ASDBD plasma actuator, and the electrode height is adjustable. The effects of different electrode heights on the airflow acceleration behavior are experimentally investigated by measuring surface potential distribution, ionic wind velocity, and mean thrust force production. It is demonstrated that the airflow velocity and thrust force increase with the exposed electrode height and the best actuator performance can be obtained when the exposed electrode is adjusted to an appropriate height. The difference, as analyzed, is mainly due to the distinct plasma spatial distributions at different exposed electrode heights.

Characterization of DBD plasma actuator with ZnO nanowire arrays

“…Enloe's group [21,22] showed that the thrust was a linear function of the power consumption, which was confirmed by Kriegseis's study [23], and indicated that the electric field enhancement was a dominant factor for determining the effectiveness of momentum coupling into surrounding gas where the geometrical and electrical parameters played important roles in the force production. Hoskinson et al [6] demonstrated that different electrode shapes (cylindrical and rectangular shape) could result in different thrust and other authors [7][8][9] also studied the effect of electrode structures on mechanical performance and reached similar conclusions that field localized distribution was a vital factor for the increase of mechanical performance.…”

“…Consequently, the effects of parametric variations that could lead to the amplification of charge density and field intensity (e.g. EE [6][7][8][9], dielectric materials (DMs) [10][11][12][13], applied voltage [14,15], surrounding condition [16,17]) have been studied, widely. However, both the charge distribution and interacting neutral flow field are strongly localized and unsteady, i.e.…”

Characterization of surface dielectric barrier discharge (SDBD) based on PI/Al2O3 nanocomposite

“…After 30 h of plasma discharge aging, for the pure PI actuator, as shown in Figure (b), it can be seen that in both positive and negative going cycle, the current pulses became much denser and had higher amplitudes, which might be caused by the accumulated charges of the filaments over the dielectric material in preceding half cycle of the applied voltage and enhanced electric field in the next half cycle. While for the PI/Al 2 O 3 actuator shown in Figure (d), the amplitudes of current pulses only slightly increased in the positive‐going cycle, suggesting that after plasma discharge aging, the charge accumulation on the surface was not as serious as the case of the pure PI actuator, which was beneficial to the thrust production in active flow control . During the negative‐gong cycle, the change was not apparent either.…”

“…Plenty of reports have investigated the performances of the plasma actuators for a variety of parameters including exposed electrode shape, electrode length or width, material permittivity, voltage waveform, pressure, and so on. Although the produced body force or induced flow velocity has been optimized and enhanced, attentions to their robustness during the long plasma processing are far from adequate at present.…”

The effects of applying different bias voltages and phase differences on performance of an asymmetric surface dielectric barrier discharge; an experimental investigation

“…As the result of plasma-accelerated ion interactions with the air neutral molecules, the momentum transfers to the surrounding air and a secondary flow, which is called the ionic wind or electric wind, will be induced. The effect of ASDBD in injecting momentum to the flow is noticeable in aerodynamic flow control applications, so a lot of experimental and numerical studies have been done to improve its operation efficiency [8][9][10][11][12]. Porter et al [13] investigated the phenomenology of the momentum transfer to air by measuring the temporal and time averaged body force.…”