Abstract

A numerical study of glow discharges was carried out in order to evaluate their potential for flow control applications. As part of this project, a three-dimensional computer code has been written to solve, in an implicit, loosely-coupled fashion, the fluid conservation laws, the charged particle continuity equations under the drift-diffusion model, and the Poisson equation for the electric potential. Fully three-dimensional calculations have been carried out for DC discharges in nitrogen, and changes in the flow in the presence a discharge have been demonstrated. In computations of a three-dimensional electrode configuration mounted on a flat plate in a Mach 5 crossflow, the discharge was found to thicken the boundary layer. The resulting compression waves led to increased pressure forces at the plate surface. These changes in flow structure occurred through dissipative heating; the body force term in the fluid momentum equation was negligible. The computations are in qualitative agreement with total temperature measurements made in a similar configuration for air flow. A preliminary investigation of the effect of an applied magnetic field has also been carried out. A computation of a simple discharge between parallel plates showed that an applied axial magnetic field tends to suppress the radial component of the current density.

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