Discharge Characteristics of Dielectric Barrier Discharge Plasma Actuator at Broad Pressure Range

In order to adopt to the broad pressure range of aircraft at high attitude under plasma flow control, based on the classical dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator (DBDPA) and its discharge in different pressure in stationary atmospheric, we investigated the influences of pressure on the discharge onset voltage, glow pattern, spectral characteristics, V-A characteristics, discharge power, time averaged thrust, and time averaged velocity of induced flow. The results show that, as the air pressure drops from 0.1 MPa to 0.02 MPa, the onset voltage decreases gradually from 6.4 kV to 2.8 kV, the discharge glow becomes brighter and its area becomes wider (from about 2 mm to 15 mm), and the spectral intensity increases; the line position remains unchanged, the current amplitude and the peak of micro-discharge current pulseincreases; the discharge power increases monotonically and raises steeply below 0.06 MPa, the time averaged velocity of induced flow increases monotonically on the whole, while the time averaged thrust firstly increases and then declines, where a peak-value pressure exists in proportional to the driven voltage, 0.04 MPa for 12 kV and 0.06 MPa for 16 kV. In addition, both of the two time averaged quantities, thrust and induced velocity, are proportional to the driven voltage and frequency respectively. At a particular low atmosphere pressure, 0.05 MPa, the discharge power is proportional to the driven voltage, but increases first and then decreases as the frequency rincreases, where a peak-value frequency of 3.5 kHz exists. © 2019, High Voltage Engineering Editorial Department of CEPRI. All right reserved.