Airfoil friction drag reduction based on grid-type and super-dense array plasma actuators

To improve the cruise flight performance of aircraft, two new configurations of plasma actuators(grid-type and super-dense array) were investigated to reduce the turbulent skin friction drag of a low-speed airfoil. The induced jet characteristics of the two actuators in quiescent air were diagnosed with high-speed particle image velocimetry(PIV), and their drag reduction efficiencies were examined under different operating conditions in a wind tunnel. The results showed that the grid-type plasma actuator was capable of producing a wall-normal jet array(peak magnitude: 1.07 m/s) similar to that generated in a micro-blowing technique, while the superdense array plasma actuator created a wavy wall-parallel jet(magnitude: 0.94 m/s) due to the discrete spanwise electrostatic forces. Under a comparable electrical power consumption level,the super-dense array plasma actuator array significantly outperformed the grid-type configuration,reducing the total airfoil friction drag by approximately 22% at a free-stream velocity of 20 m/s.The magnitude of drag reduction was proportional to the dimensionless jet velocity ratio(r), and a threshold r = 0.014 existed under which little impact on airfoil drag could be discerned.

Experimental investigation of dynamic stall flow control using a microsecond-pulsed plasma actuator

To alleviate the performance deterioration caused by dynamic stall of a wind turbine airfoil,the flow control by a microsecond-pulsed dielectric barrier discharge(MP-DBD) actuator on the dynamic stall of a periodically pitching NACA0012 airfoil was investigated experimentally.Unsteady pressure measurements with high temporal accuracy were employed in this study,and the unsteady characteristics of the boundary layer were investigated by wavelet packet analysis and the moving root mean square method based on the acquired pressure.The experimental Mach number was 0.2,and the chord-based Reynolds number was 870 000.The dimensionless actuation frequencies F+ were chosen to be 0.5,1,2,and 3,respectively.For the light dynamic regime,the MP-DBD plasma actuator plays the role of suppressing flow separation from the trial edge and accelerating the flow reattachment due to the high-momentum freestream flow being entrained into the boundary layer.Meanwhile,actuation effects were promoted with the increasing dimensionless actuation frequency F+.The control effects of the deep dynamic stall were to delay the onset and reduce the strength of the dynamic stall vortex due to the accumulating vorticity near the leading edge being removed by the induced coherent vortex structures.The laminar fluctuation and Kelvin-Helmholtz(K-H) instabilities of transition and relaminarization were also mitigated by the MP-DBD actuation,and the alleviated K-H rolls led to the delay of the transition onset and earlier laminar reattachment,which improved the hysteresis effect of the dynamic stall.For the controlled cases of F+=2,and F+=3,the laminar fluctuation was replaced by relatively low frequency band disturbances corresponding to the harmonic responses of the MP-DBD actuation frequency.

Turbulent boundary layer control with DBD plasma actuators

The flat-plate turbulent boundary layer at Reτ=1140 is manipulated using a spanwise array of bidirectional dielectric barrier discharge(DBD)plasma actuators.Based on the features of no moving mechanical parts in the DBD plasma control technology and hot-wire anemometer velocity measurements,a novel convenient method of local drag reduction(DR)measurement is proposed by measuring the single-point velocity within the linear region of the viscous sublayer.We analyze the premise of using the method,and the maximum effective measurement range of-73.1%<DR<42.2%is obtained according to the experimental environment in this work.The local drag decreases downstream of the center of two adjacent upper electrodes and increases downstream of the upper electrodes.The magnitude of the local DR increases with increasing voltage and decreases as it moves away from the actuators.For the spanwise position in between,the streamwise distribution of the local DR is very dependent on the voltage.The variable-interval time-average detection results reveal that all bursting intensities are reduced compared to the baseline,and the amount of reduction is comparable to the absolute values of the local DR.Compared with previous results,we infer that the control mechanism is that many meandering streaks are combined together into single stabilized streaks.

Control of Karman Vortex Street By Using Plasma Actuators

A mathematical model for unsteady electro-and aerodynamic processes in the presence of a plasma actuator has been elaborated through physical modeling of the dielectric barrier discharge.A specialized computational fluid dynamics package has been developed accordingly in order to calculate steady and unsteady laminar and turbulent flows.For the numerical simulation of the dielectric barrier discharge,in particular,two equations have been added to the Navier-Stokes equations and solved.They describe the distribution of the applied voltage and the charged particles density.The impact of the plasma actuator on air has been accounted for through the Lorentz force,included as a source term in the momentum balance equation.The system of governing equations for the considered hydrodynamics and electrodynamics has been written in an arbitrary curvilinear coordinate system in dimensionless form and integrated in the framework of a finite volume method.A TVD scheme with a third-order ISNAS flow limiter has been chosen for the convective terms approximation.The obtained block-matrix system of linear algebraic equations has been solved by the generalized minimal residual(GMRES)method with ILU(k)preconditioning.Using this approach,the occurrence of a propulsion force,emerging as a result of the action of plasma actuators on a cylinder in quiescent air,has been investigated.The possibility to mitigate the cylinder drag coefficient with the help of the plasma actuators,due to the ensuing suppression of the Karman vortex street,has been demonstrated.

Turbulent boundary layer control with a spanwise array of DBD plasma actuators

The turbulent boundary layer control on NACA 0012 airfoil with Mach number ranging from 0.3 to 0.5 by a spanwise array of dielectric barrier discharge(DBD)plasma actuators by hot-film sensor technology is investigated.Due to temperature change mainly caused through heat produced along with plasma will lead to measurement error of shear stress measured by hot-film sensor,the correction method that takes account of the change measured by another sensor is used and works well.In order to achieve the value of shear stress change,we combine computational fluid dynamics computation with experiment to calibrate the hot-film sensor.To test the stability of the hot-film sensor,seven repeated measurements of shear stress at Ma=0.3 are conducted and show that confidence interval of hot-film sensor measurement is from−0.18 to 0.18 Pa and the root mean square is 0.11 Pa giving a relative error 0.5%over all Mach numbers in this experiment.The research on the turbulent boundary layer control with DBD plasma actuators demonstrates that the control makes shear stress increase by about 6%over the three Mach numbers,which is thought to be reliable through comparing it with the relative error 0.5%,and the value is hardly affected by burst frequency and excitation voltage.

Flow separation control over an airfoil using continuous alternating current plasma actuator

The flow separation control over an NACA 0015 airfoil using continuous alternating current(AC)dielectric barrier discharge(DBD)plasma actuator is investigated experimentally and numerically.This work is intended to report some observations made from our experiment,to which little attention is paid in the previous studies,but which is thought to be important to the understanding of control of complex flow separation with AC DBD.To this end,the response of separated flow to AC plasma actuation is visualized through the time-resolved particle image velocimetry(PIV)measurement,whereas numerical simulation is carried out to complement the experiment.The flow control process at chord-based Reynolds number(Re)of 3.31×105 is investigated.It is found that the response of external flow to plasma forcing is delayed for up to tens of milliseconds and the delay time increases with angle of attack increasing.Also observed is that at the intermediate angle of attack near stall,the forced flow features a well re-organized flow pattern.However,for airfoil at high post-stall angle of attack,the already well suppressed flow field can recover to the massively separated flow state and then reattach to airfoil surface with the flow pattern fluctuating between the two states in an irregular manner.This is contrary to one’s first thought that the forced flow at any angles of attack will become well organized and regular,and reflects the complexity of flow separation control.

Experimental Study of the Unsteady Actuation Effect on Induced Flow Characteristics in DBD Plasma Actuators

The main aim of this paper is to investigate unsteady actuation effects on the operation of dielectric barrier discharge （DBD） plasma actuators and to study induced flow characteristics of steady and unsteady actuators in quiescent air. The parameters affecting the operation of unsteady plasma actuators were experimentally measured and compared with the ones for steady actuators. The effects of excitation frequency and duty cycle on the induced flow pattern properties were studied by means of hot-wire anemometers, and the smoke visualization method was also used. It was observed that the current and the mean induced velocity linearly increase with increasing duty cycle while they are not sensitive to excitation frequency. Furthermore, with increasing excitation frequency, the magnitude of vortices shedding from the actuator decreases while their frequency increases. Nevertheless, when the excitation frequency grows beyond a certain level, the induced flow downstream of the actuator behaves as a steady flow. However, the results for steady actuators show that by increasing the applied voltage and carrier frequency, the velocity of the induced flow first increases and then decreases with actuator saturation and the onset of the emission of streaky glow discharge.

Influence of low ambient pressure on the performance of a high-energy array surface arc plasma actuator

In order to solve the problem of single arc plasma actuator's failure to suppress the boundary layer separation, the effectiveness of the array surface arc plasma actuator to enhance the excitation intensity is verified by experiment. In this study, an electrical parameter measurement system and high-speed schlieren technology were adopted to delve into the electrical, flow field, and excitation characteristics of the high-energy array surface arc plasma actuator under low ambient pressure. The high-energy array surface arc discharge released considerable heat rapidly;as a result, two characteristic structures were generated, i.e., the precursor shock wave and thermal deposition area. The duration increased with the increase in environmental pressure. The lower the pressure, the wider the thermal deposition area's influence range. The precursor shock wave exhibited a higher propagation speed at the initial phase of discharge;it tended to decay over time and finally remained at 340 m/s. The lower the environmental pressure, the higher the speed would be at the initial phase. High-energy array surface arc plasma actuator can be employed to achieve effective high-speed aircraft flow control.

Active control of noise amplification in the flow over a square leading-edge flat plate utilizing DBD plasma actuator

Perturbation is generally considered as the flow noise,and its energy can gain transient growth in the separation bubble.The amplified perturbations may cause unstable Kelvin–Helmohltz vortices which induce the three-dimensional transition.Active control of noise amplification via dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator in the flow over a square leading-edge flat plate is numerically studied.The actuator is installed near the plate leading-edge where the separation bubble is formed.The maximum energy amplification of perturbations is positively correlated with the separation bubble scale which decreases with the increasing control parameters.As the magnitude of noise amplification is reduced,the laminar-turbulent transition is successfully suppressed.

Numerical Simulation of Stall Flow Control Using a DBD Plasma Actuator in Pulse Mode

A numerical simulation method is employed to investigate the effects of the unsteady plasma body force over the stalled NACA 0015 airfoil at low Reynolds number flow conditions. The plasma body force created by a dielectric barrier discharge actuator is modeled with a phenomenological method for plasma simulation coupled with the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. The governing equations are solved using an efficient implicit finitevolume method. The responses of the separated flow field to the effects of an unsteady body force in various inter- pulses and duty cycles as well as different locations and magnitudes are studied. It is shown that the duty cycle and inter-pulse are key parameters for flow separation control. Additionally, it is concluded that the body force is able to attach the flow and can affect boundary layer grow that Mach number 0.1 and Reynolds number of 45000.

Recent developments in thermal characteristics of surface dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuators driven by sinusoidal high-voltage power

Flow control using surface Dielectric Barrier Discharge(DBD)plasma actuators driven by a sinusoidal alternating-current power supply has gained significant attention from the aeronautic industry.The induced flow field of the plasma actuator,with the starting vortex in the wall jet,plays an important role in flow control.However,the energy consumed for producing the induced flow field is only a small fraction of the total energy utilized by the plasma actuator,and most of the total energy is used in gas heating and dielectric heating.Therefore,an in-depth analysis of the thermal characteristics of the plasma actuator is the key to develop its potential capability further.In addition,compared with the investigation on the aerodynamic characteristics of the plasma actuator,there is a relative lack of detail in the study of its thermal characteristics.Understanding the thermal characteristics of the plasma actuator is of great interest for providing a deeper insight into the underlying working principles,advancing its numerical simulation model,prolonging its life,and achieving several potential engineering applications,such as antiicing and deicing.The present paper reviews the thermal characteristics of the plasma actuator,summarizes the influence of the dielectric film and actuation parameters on heating,and discusses the formation and transfer mechanism of the induced heating based on the discharge regimes of the plasma actuator in one cycle.

Experimental and numerical investigation of a self-supplementing dual-cavity plasma synthetic jet actuator

The primary issue regarding the plasma synthetic jet actuator(PSJA)is its performance attenuation at high frequencies.To solve this issue,a self-supplementing,dual-cavity,plasma synthetic jet actuator(SD-PSJA)is designed,and the static properties of the SD-PSJA are investigated through experiments and numerical simulations.The pressure measurement shows that the SD-PSJA has two saturation frequencies(1200 Hz and 2100 Hz),and the experimental results show that both the saturation frequencies decrease as the volume of the bottom cavity of the SD-PSJA increases.As the size of the supplement hole increases,the first saturation frequency increases continuously,while the second saturation frequency shows a trend of first decreasing and then increasing.Numerical simulations show that the working process of the SD-PSJA is similar to that of the PSJA,but the volume of the cavity in the SD-PSJA is smaller than that of the PSJA;the SD-PSJA can supplement air to the top cavity through two holes,thus reducing the refresh time and effectively improving the jet intensity of the actuator at high frequencies.

Turbulent boundary layer separation control using plasma actuator at Reynolds number 2000000

An experimental investigation was conducted to evaluate the effect of symmetrical plasma actuators on turbulent boundary layer separation control at high Reynolds number. Compared with the traditional control method of plasma actuator, the whole test model was made of aluminum and acted as a covered electrode of the symmetrical plasma actuator. The experimental study of plasma actuators＇ effect on surrounding air, a canonical zero-pressure gradient turbulent boundary, was carried out using particle image velocimetry （PIV） and laser Doppler velocimetry （LDV） in the 0.75 m × 0.75 m low speed wind tunnel to reveal the symmetrical plasma actuator characterization in an external flow. A half model of wing-body configuration was experimentally investigated in the 3.2 m low speed wind tunnel with a six-component strain gauge balance and PIV. The results show that the turbulent boundary layer separation of wing can be obviously suppressed and the maximum lift coefficient is improved at high Reynolds number with the symmetrical plasma actuator. It turns out that the maximum lift coefficient increased by approximately 8.98% and the stall angle of attack was delayed by approximately 2° at Reynolds number 2 ×10……6. The effective mechanism for the turbulent separation control by the symmetrical plasma actuators is to induce the vortex near the wing surface which could create the relatively large- scale disturbance and promote momentum mixing between low speed flow and main flow regions.

Flight safety oriented ice shape modulation using distributed plasma actuator units

Ice accretion on the wings seriously threatens the flight safety of an aircraft.From the perspectives of ensuring flight safety and saving power consumption,the ice shape modulation method using distributed plasma is proposed.Distributed plasma actuator units are designed to modulate the spanwise continuous ice at the leading edge into periodically segmented ice pieces,forming a wavy leading edge.Both airfoil and scaled aircraft model,with continuous and modulated ice,are experimentally investigated and simulated.Compared with the continuous ice,ice shape modulation can significantly improve the aerodynamic performance,flight control characteristics and flight safety.This method can save about half electric power,which is very beneficial for application.

Experimental Investigation of the Effects of Various Plasma Actuator Configurations on Lift and Drag Coefficients of a Circular Cylinder Including the Effects of Electrodes

In this paper, the effects of the existence of plasma actuator electrodes and also various configurations of the actuator for controlling the flow field around a circular cylinder are experimentally investigated. The cylinder is made of PVC （Polyvinyl Chloride） and considered as a dielectric barrier. Two electrodes are fiush-mounted on the surface of the cylinder and are connected to a DC high voltage power supply lbr generation of electrical discharge. Pressure distribution results show that the existence of the electrodes and also the plasma are able to change the pressure distribution around the cylinder and consequently the lili and drag coefficients. It is found that the effect of the existence of the electrodes is comparable with the effect of plasma actuator in con- trolling the flow field around the cylinder and this effect is not reported by other researchers. Eventually it is concluded that the existence of the electrodes or any extra obiects on the cylinder and also the existence of the plasma are capable of changing the flow field structure around the cylinder so that the behavior of the lift and drag coefficients of the cylinder will be changed significantly.

Flow field generated by a dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator in quiescent air at initiation stage

A single Dielectric Barrier Discharge(DBD) plasma actuator driven by Alternating Current(AC) power, capable of inducing a starting vortex and a wall jet in quiescent air, is suited for low-Reynolds-number flow control. However, the starting vortex and the wall jet are usually observed after the plasma actuator has been operated for dozens of and hundreds of cycles of the voltage, respectively. The detail of the induced flow field at the initiation stage of the plasma actuator has rarely been addressed. At the initiation stage, a thin jet that provides the impetus for the entrainment of the induced flow at the beginning of the plasma actuation is first observed by using a high-accuracy phase-lock Schlieren technique and a high-speed Particle Image Velocimetry(PIV) system. This is the initial form of the momentum transfer from the plasma to the fluid.Then, an arched type jet is created by the plasma actuator. In addition, the whole development process of the induced flow field from the starting point of the thin jet to the quasi-steady stage of wall jet is presented for providing a comprehensive understanding of the plasma actuator and proposing a relevant enhancement of the numerical simulation model.

Rotor performance enhancement by alternating current dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuation

An experimental system was established to explore the plasma flow control effect for helicopter rotors in hover mode.With the plasma actuator applied at the leading edge of the rotor blades,alternating current dielectric barrier discharge(AC-DBD) plasma actuation was generated by a sinusoidal AC high-voltage generator.By direct force measurement,the influence of actuation parameters on the aerodynamic performance of the rotor was investigated at a tip Reynolds number of 1.7 × 105.AC-DBD actuation can delay the blade stall to more than 3° with a 20%increase of about in the thrust coefficient at the post-stall pitch.At a constant motor power driving the rotor,AC-DBD actuation could reduce the rotor’s torque at the stalled pitch and increase the rotational speed of the rotor.Also,AC-DBD actuation could maintain a relatively high hover efficiency of the rotor at large collective pitches.In a wide range of actuation parameters,AC-DBD plasma actuation could improve the rotor’s aerodynamic performance at large blade pitches.High-speed photography of the tuft motion on the blade’s upper surface showed that AC-DBD plasma actuation could promote the reattachment of the blade’s separation flow.

Experimental Characterization of the Plasma Synthetic Jet Actuator

The plasma synthetic jet is a novel active flow control method because of advantages such as fast response, high frequency and non-moving parts, and it has received more attention recently, especially regarding its application to high-speed flow control. In this paper, the experimental characterization of the plasma synthetic jet actuator is investigated. The actuator consists of a copper anode, a tungsten cathode and a ceramic shell, and with these three parts a cavity can be formed inside the actuator. A pulsed-DC power supply was adopted to generate the arc plasma between the electrodes, through which the gas inside was heated and expanded from the orifice. Discharge parameters such as voltage and current were recorded, respectively, by voltage and current probes. The schlieren system was used for flow visualization, and jet velocities with different discharge parameters were measured. The schlieren images showed that the strength of plasma jets in a series of pulses varies from each other. Through velocity measurement, it is found that at a fixed frequency, the jet velocity hardly increases when the discharge voltage ranges from 16 kV to 20 kV. However, with the discharge voltage fixed, the jet velocity suddenly decreases when the pulse frequency rises above 500 Hz, whereas at other testing frequencies no such decrease was observed. The maximum jet velocity measured in the experiment was up to 110 m/s, which is believed to be effective for high-speed flow control.

Plasma Sheet Actuator Driven by Repetitive Nanosecond Pulses with a Negative DC Component

A type of electrical discharge called sliding discharge was developed to generate plasma aerodynamic actuation for flow control. A three-electrode plasma sheet actuator driven by repetitive nanosecond pulses with a negative DC component was used to generate sliding discharge, which can be called nanosecond-pulse sliding discharge. The phenomenology and behaviour of the plasma sheet actuator were investigated experimentally. Discharge morphology shows that the formation of nanosecond-pulse sliding discharge is dependent on the peak value of the repetitive nanosecond pulses and negative DC component applied on the plasma sheet actuator. Compared to dielectric barrier discharge （DBD）, the extension of plasma in nanosecond-pulse sliding discharge is quasi-diffusive, stable, longer and more intensive. Test results of particle image velocimetry demonstrate that the negative DC component applied to a third electrode could significantly modify the topology of the flow induced by nanosecond-pulse DBD. Body force induced by the nanosecond-pulse sliding discharge can be approximately in the order of mN. Both the maximum velocity and the body force induced by sliding discharge increase significantly as compared to single DBD. Therefore, nanosecond-pulse sliding discharge is a preferable plasma aerodynamic actuation generation mode, which is very promising in the field of aerodynamics.

Influence of air pressure on the performance of plasma synthetic jet actuator

Plasma synthetic jet actuator（PSJA） has a wide application prospect in the high-speed flow control field for its high jet velocity.In this paper,the influence of the air pressure on the performance of a two-electrode PSJA is investigated by the schlieren method in a large range from 7 k Pa to 100 k Pa.The energy consumed by the PSJA is roughly the same for all the pressure levels.Traces of the precursor shock wave velocity and the jet front velocity vary a lot for different pressures.The precursor shock wave velocity first decreases gradually and then remains at 345 m/s as the air pressure increases.The peak jet front velocity always appears at the first appearance of a jet,and it decreases gradually with the increase of the air pressure.A maximum precursor shock wave velocity of 520 m/s and a maximum jet front velocity of 440 m/s are observed at the pressure of 7 k Pa.The averaged jet velocity in one period ranges from 44 m/s to 54 m/s for all air pressures,and it drops with the rising of the air pressure.High velocities of the precursor shock wave and the jet front indicate that this type of PSJA can still be used to influence the high-speed flow field at 7 k Pa.