Plasma Flow Control

Abstract

Plasma flow control, based on the plasma aerodynamic actuation, is a novel active flow control technique to improve aircrafts’ aerodynamic characteristics and propulsion efficiency. Plasma flow control has drawn considerable attention and been used in boundary layer acceleration, airfoil separation control, forebody separation control, turbine blade separation control, axial compressor stability extension, heat transfer and high speed jet control. Plasma aerodynamic actuator has many advantageous features including robustness, simplicity, low power consumption and ability for real-time control at high frequency. In this chapter, the principle of plasma aerodynamic actuation and its application in subsonic and supersonic flow control was summarized. In order to better understand the underlying physical mechanism of plasma flow control and optimize the geometric configuration of the actuator, the characteristics of the plasma aerodynamic actuation, including gas temperature, electron density and temperature, induced body force, velocity and vorticity were investigated. Both wind tunnel experiments and computations were performed to investigate the flow control capability of plasma aerodynamic actuation for airfoil separation control, corner separation control, axial compressor stability extension and shock wave control.