Effect of opposite phase AC voltage application using dual power supplies on thrust and induced flow of plasma actuator

Abstract

This study proposes a new driving method using dual power supplies to address a trade-off between power supply miniaturization and the high voltage output driving of a dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator by simultaneously applying two AC voltages with opposite phases to the exposed and encapsulated electrodes. The performance of the proposed method was compared with that of two conventional driving methods that use a single power supply. The maximum peak-to-peak voltage with the single power supply was 23 kV, whereas that with the dual power supplies using a transformer with a lower output capability was 30 kV. At the same peak-to-peak voltage, the method using dual power supplies had intermediate time-averaged thrust and induced flow velocity among the three methods. This is attributed to the different discharge distributions at the edge of the exposed electrode, which are caused by the different electric field strengths for each method.