Contribution of Plasma Control Technology for Aerodynamic Applications

ERIC MOREAU; CHRSITOPHE LOUSTE; GUILLERMO ARTANA; MAXIME FORTE; GERARD TOUCHARD

Plasma Process and Polymers

Wiley

Año: 2006 vol. 3 p. 696 - 707

1612 8850

The goal for aerospace applications is to generate a strong ‘‘electric wind’’ close to the wall in order to modify the detachment or the reattachment conditions. The main advantage of these actuators is that they have no moving parts and a short response time. During these last decades,several investigations have been conducted with plasma actuation for aeronautic applications, either to modify the electromagnetic environment of a flying object, or to change their aerodynamic characteristics. In our laboratory, we are just interested in aerodynamic issues.Moreover, we focus only on subsonic flows, thus the work about the shock wave configuration with plasma actuation will not be discussed here. Investigations on plasma actuators for subsonic flows are more recent and limited.[1–10] Nevertheless, the interest of aeronautic industry for thisdevice is getting more and more imperative. Indeed, such actuator could be used to control the laminar-turbulent transition inside the boundary layer, in order to reduce the drag of a plane wing, to stabilize or to mix the flow in order to avoid unsteadiness, which generates unwanted vibrations, noise, and energy losses. In the following few sections, the characteristics of the plasma actuators used in the present work for the airflow control, as well as the behaviorof the induced ‘‘electric winds’’ are presented.