Influence of needle electrode arrangement on gas transportation performance of the multi-needle ionic wind pump

The ionic wind pump with multi-electrode arrangement is helpful in enlarging its application. However, the arrangement has an inherent mutual interference among the electrodes during discharging process, which have a vital influence on the transportation performance of the ionic wind pump. Meanwhile, the relevance between the mutual interference and the intensity of the ionic wind has not been clearly re-vealed. In this study, the gas transportation experiments of the multi-needle electrode ionic wind pump are conducted. The intensity variation of the ionic wind with mutual interference is observed in the experiments. A simulation model based on the plasma transportation is proposed to describe the multi -needle discharging process with mutual interference effect. The EHD force is used as the indicator param-eter for the intensity of the ionic wind. The experimental results show that the measured mass flow rate of the ionic wind pump is enhanced under dual-row needles and weakened under triple-row needles. Based on the simulation results, the above phenomenon is attributed to variations of the space charge and electric field induced by multi-needle discharging. The added needle electrodes reduce the electric field intensity per needle while increasing the net negative charge in the space. Due to the discharging in-terference among the needles, the increment of the net negative charge is not proportional to the number of needles. As a result, comparing the three arrangements from the simulations, the electrohydrodynamic (EHD) force of each needle, which is the electric field intensity multiplying by space charge density, in-creases approximately 45.8% under dual needles and decreases approximately 38.1% under triple needles. The conclusions obtained in this paper can help to guide the design and optimization of the multi-needle ionic wind pump.(c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.