Experimental study on supersonic plate boundary layer transition under pulsed arc plasma excitation control

Abstract

Pulsed arc plasma excitation is characterized by strong local heating effect and wide disturbance range, and it has a broad application prospect in supersonic flow control. In this paper, by using electrical parameter measurement system and high speed schlieren technique, we study the electrical and flow field characteristics of pulsed arc plasma excitation under the condition of <i>Ma</i> = 3 incoming flow. The nano-particle planar laser scattering (NPLS) is used to investigate the flow structure of the supersonic flat boundary layer, and the transition characteristics of the boundary layer at different plasma excitation frequencies are studied. The experimental results show that in the flow field with <i>Ma</i> = 3 and the total incoming pressure <i>P</i><sub>0</sub> = 1 atm (1 atm = 1.01 × 10<sup>5</sup> Pa), the peak voltage of the pulsed arc plasma actuator discharge is 6 kV, the peak current is 70 A, the time scale of the discharge is about 300 ns, the single discharge energy is 70 mJ; the pulsed arc discharge will produce the precursor shock wave with higher velocity and the thermal deposition zone with higher temperature, which will exert continuously disturbance on the boundary layer. The pulsed arc plasma excitation with perturbation can promote the transition of supersonic plate boundary layer. Moreover, the high-frequency impact effect of pulsed discharge can promote the transition to occur ahead of time, and the higher the frequency, the better the effect is. As the excitation frequency increases, the transition position of the boundary layer of the supersonic flat plate moves forward, and the length of the transition area of the boundary layer becomes shorter as the excitation frequency increases. When the excitation frequency is 60 kHz, the length of transition zone is 0 and the thickness of turbulent boundary layer is 25 mm. When a high frequency is applied (<i>f</i> = 40, 60 kHz), the transition path of the boundary layer is that the shock wave generated by the plasma excitation triggers the unstable wave, and the development of unstable waves directly skips the linear growth stage, passes through the bypass and transitions into turbulent flow. The pulsed arc plasma excitation can be used to promote supersonic boundary layer transition.