Mean model of the dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator including photoionization

A numerical algorithm is proposed for simulation of the dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuators including photo-ionization. The computational bottleneck related to a very long computing time has been circumvented by suppressing the discharge pulses and proposing a mean discharge model. It incorporates an artificial damping term into the electron transport equation to suppress the formation of pulses, which significantly accelerates the simulation. Based on the fluid description of three generic species: electrons, positive and negative ions, the model accounts for the drift, diffusion, and reaction terms. The reaction coefficients are extracted from the Boltzmann equation considering the local field approximation. A self-sustained discharge is achieved by including photo-ionization during the positive voltage phase, and the secondary electron emission from the metal surface, during the negative voltage phase. The proposed methodology compromises the computational burdens of the first-principle approaches and inadequacy of the simplistic models in incorporating the problem physics. The accuracy of the proposed methodology has been validated by comparing the computational and experimental data for the electrical and flow characteristics of a laboratory actuator.