Computational Study of Discharge Process in Plasma Actuator for Enhanced Electrohydrodynamic Force Generation toward Low-Voltage Operation

抄録

Numerical simulations of discharge process in two types of actuator modules were conducted to obtain better understanding of the process of electrohydrodynamic (EHD) force generation toward the low-voltage operation. The charge accumulated on the dielectric surface can be absorbed by the additional downstream-side exposed electrode, which is a component of the adjacent actuator module in a multi-module plasma actuator, when positively-DC-biased negative polarity pulses are applied. The elimination of the surface charge results in EHD force enhancement. The enhanced EHD force is also obtained when a negatively-DC-biased positive polarity pulses are applied. The applied voltage affects the surface charge profile and EHD force enhancement by the downstream-side exposed electrode. Under our simulation condition, the positively-DC-biased negative pulses obtain larger enhancement of EHD force compared to that obtained by the negatively-DC-biased positive pulses.