Computational and Experimental Analysis of Mach 5 Air Flow over a Cylinder with a Nanosecond Pulse Discharge

Abstract

A computational study is performed for Mach 5 air flow over a cylinder with a dielectric barrier discharge actuator set into the cylinder surface. The actuator is pulsed at nanosecond time scales, which rapidly adds energy to the flow, thereby creating a shock wave that travels away from the pulse source. As the shock wave travels upstream, it interacts with the standing bow-shock and momentarily increases the bow-shock standoff distance. This phenomenon is also observed in phase-locked schlieren photography captured duriing the experiment. The focus of this paper is to reproduce flow phenomena observed in the experiment using high-fidelity computations in order to provide additional insight into the shock-shock interaction, the effect the dielectric barrier discharge pulse has on the surface properties of the cylinder, and develop a reduced-order phenomenological model representative of the nanosecond pulse discharge system. Experimental and high-fidelity modeling studies of the nanosecond pulse dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuators are known to operate with relatively low temperatures. This work explores the possibility that the induced compression wave is generated by rapid thermalization of the discharge which results in a local temperature rise occurring on longer time scales. Two-dimensional simulations are performed and provide many useful details about the discharge event while comparing with many measurements captured by the experiment.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2012
Accession Number
ADA558961

Entities

People

  • Igor Adamovich
  • Jonathan Poggie
  • Munetake Nishihara
  • Nicholas J. Bisek

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boundary Layer
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Energy Transfer
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Fluid Flow
  • Geometry
  • Heat Transfer
  • Laser Induced Fluorescence
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Monte Carlo Method
  • Nanosecond Time
  • Physics Laboratories
  • Pressure Distribution
  • Standing Waves
  • Surface Properties
  • Test Facilities
  • Turbulent Mixing

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Combustion Dynamics and Shock Wave Physics.
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Pulsed Power and Plasma Physics.