A model of surface dielectric barrier discharge power

Surface dielectric barrier discharges (SDBDs) are a type of asymmetric dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) that can be used to generate ions and produce aerodynamic forces in air. They have shown promise in a range of aerospace applications, including as actuators for solid-state aircraft control or aerodynamic enhancement and as ion sources for electroaerodynamic aircraft propulsion. However, their power draw characteristics are not well understood. Whereas existing approaches use empirical functional fits to estimate the power of specific SDBD configurations, we develop here a physics-based model for SDBD power consumption that accounts for material and geometric variation between SDBDs. The model is based on models for parallel-plate or "volume" DBDs but accounts for the "virtual electrode" resulting from changing plasma length that is particular to SDBDs. We experimentally measure the power of SDBDs of three materials, eleven thicknesses, and 29 electrical operating points to find a correlation with r2=0.99 (n=106) between model and experiment. We also use SDBD power measurements from four experiments in the literature and find a correlation with r2=0.99 (n=101) between our model and these experiments. Since we do not use any measured parameters from those experiments in our model, this suggests that our model has the ability to robustly predict the power for different SDBD construction methods and experimental techniques. Therefore, this work provides a robust method for the quantitative design and power optimization of SDBDs for a range of engineering applications, including aerospace propulsion.