Electrical characteristics of wire-to-wire dielectric barrier discharges

Abstract

A wire-to-wire dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) is a novel method of plasma generation that has been demonstrated as an effective ion source for electroaerodynamic ion propulsion devices. A wire-to-wire DBD comprises two parallel wires spaced less than a millimeter apart: an insulated high voltage wire forms the encapsulated electrode and a thin uninsulated wire forms the exposed electrode. This electrode arrangement is lightweight, simple to manufacture, and has low aerodynamic drag; these properties make it suitable for ion generation in atmospheric ion propulsion and other potential applications. We performed a parametric experimental exploration of this type of plasma source using a sinusoidal driving signal, measuring power draw and discharge characteristics over a range of electrical, geometric, and dielectric material parameters. We find that it has similar electrical characteristics to volume DBDs. We provide a model for predicting the power draw to within 0.9 W m−1 with a correlation of r 2 = 0.99 between model and experiments.