Characteristics of sheath-driven tangential flow produced by a low-current DC surface glow discharge plasma actuator

Abstract

An experimental investigation of low-speed flow actuation at near-atmospheric pressure is presented. The flow actuation is achieved via lowcurrent (.1.0 mA) continuous or pulsed DC surface glow discharge plasma. The plasma actuator, consisting of two sharp-edged nickel electrodes, produces a tangential flow in a direction from anode to cathode, and is visualized using high-speed schlieren photography. The induced flow velocity estimated via the schlieren images reaches up to 5 m/s in test cases. The actuation capability increases with pressure and electrode gap distances, and the induced flow velocity increases logarithmically with the discharge power. Pulsed DC exhibits slightly improved actuation capability with better directionality. An analytic estimation of induced flow velocity obtained based on ion momentum in the cathode sheath and gas dynamics in one-dimensional flow yields values similar to those measured.