Impact to discharge characteristic and acceleration effect of plasma aerodynamic actuators configurations

Under normal atmosphere environment, experimental investigation on discharge characteristics and acceleration effects of plasma aerodynamic actuators with normal, semicircle and sawtooth configurations were performed. Frequency-discharge, voltage-discharge current and the boundary induced velocity were measured under different motivation parameters. The experimental results indicate that when the basic design parameters of plasma aerodynamic actuators were given, discharge voltages and discharge currents vary with the configurations but resonance frequency keeps the same, however, the induced gas flow velocities also change. It is also found that the ion streams produced by semicircle and sawtooth plasma aerodynamic actuator have very damage effects to insulation materials.