Experimental Demonstration of Multi Barrier Plasma Actuators (MBPA)

Abstract

This report is a summary of a one-year effort on demonstration experiments of a novel set of multi-barrier plasma actuators (MBPA) by the PI s research team. The typical dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma actuator consists of two electrodes separated by a dielectric layer. The surrounding air locally ionizes when a radio frequency (RF), high voltage waveform is applied to one of the electrodes. This results in an electrohydrodynamic (EHD) body force on the fluid. MBPAs extend upon the typical configuration of the DBD to incorporate multiple layers of dielectric materials and powered electrodes. This work explores different actuator designs which, through direct force balance measurements, demonstrate that the MBPA configuration effectively increases the EHD body force produced by a plasma actuator. The power consumption of these devices is analyzed and compared with typical actuator configurations. Results show significant increase in actuator effectiveness defined as the ratio of measured thrust over input power.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 23, 2011
Accession Number
ADA566592

Entities

People

  • Ryan Durscher
  • Subrata Roy

Organizations

  • University of Florida

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Actuators
  • Audio Amplifiers
  • Composite Materials
  • Data Acquisition
  • Dielectric Permittivity
  • Dielectrics
  • Electric Fields
  • Energy Consumption
  • Flow
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Frequency
  • High Voltage
  • Hypervelocity Flow
  • Materials
  • Measurement
  • Physics
  • Radio Frequency

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Plasma Physics.
  • Robotics and Automation.