Discharge characteristics of plasma sheet actuators

ROBERTO SOSA; GUILLERMO ARTANA; DIANA GRONDONA; HÉCTOR KELLY; ADRIANA MARQUEZ; FERNANDO MINOTTI

JOURNAL OF PHYSICS - D (APPLIED PHYSICS)

IOP

Año: 2007 vol. 40 p. 663 - 673

0022-3727

The electrical characteristics of a plasma sheet device used for subsonic airflow control are studied in this paper. Experiments are undertaken with a two-wire asymmetrical (different diameters, opposite polarity) electrode configuration connected to dc high voltage sources in the presence of a dielectric plate and under different gases (dry air, nitrogen and oxygen). For large distances electrode-plates it has been found that the discharge current consists of a purely dc component. The proximity of the plate reduces notably this dc current component until a limit situation for which the electrodes practically lay on the plate and a current pulsed regime is superimposed on the dc (small) component, thus establishing a plasma sheet regime. This regime could be reached only when the small wire was positive. This work establishes that the pulsed regime may be associated with a succession of positive streamers (cathode directed) which formation is promoted by different parameters of the gas and surface characteristics (thresholds of photoionization and photoemission, charge deposition,...). The dc component seems to be produced by a small number of electrons originated in the ionization region of the negative corona that are amplified in the ionization region of the positive corona. The charged particles  produced during the streamer propagation could contribute appreciably to the ion momentum transfer to the gas. This transfer should be due very likely to the drift of the charged species present in the streamer channel during the streamer collapsing phase. The source of momentum transfer associated with the dc current would always persist with a magnitude that depends on the intensity of this current.