Flow control of high-speed airfoil by dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator

Abstract

In this paper, the high speed airfoil is selected as the research object, by using the calculation method of fluid mechanics, the effect of dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma actuator on the neutral gas is seen as the body force and introduced into the Navier-Stokes equation as the source term, then the numerical simulation experiment of the flow control by dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator is carried out. The specific research of this thesis is as follows: Firstly, the plasma actuator is mounted at the front of the flow separation point and the lift-drag ratio is selected as the characterization; secondly, the two situations that the actuator works and doesn’t work are considered and then carrying out simulation experiment to study the effect on flow control of the plasma actuator; further, changing the angle of attack of the airfoil and then carrying out a series of simulation experiments under different circumstances; finally, the conclusion of the experiment is obtained so that it can be further analyzed. The calculation results show that: for the high-speed airfoil selected in this paper, the dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator can suppress the flow separation phenomenon and increase the lift-drag ratio at the same angle of attack, and the smaller the angle of attack is, the larger the lift-drag ratio increment will be, the maximum lift-drag ratio increment is about 7.82%.