Excitation of Stationary Cross-Flow Instability Modes Using a Plasma Actuator Based on Dielectric Barrier Discharge

Abstract

The article presents the results of studying the stationary mode of cross-flow instability excited by a plasma actuator based on dielectric barrier discharge in a three-dimensional boundary layer on a swept plate with an induced pressure gradient. It is shown that the actuator generates an instability mode of a given wavelength with an initial amplitude of up to 2% of the free-stream velocity, while the signal-to-noise ratio is no greater than 15%. As a result of a parametric study, a family of growth curves of the excited instability mode was obtained as a function of the parameters of the voltage supplying the discharge. It is shown that the initial amplitude of stationary cross-flow vortices generated by the actuator in the studied range of parameters depends quadratically on the overvoltage at the electrodes and linearly on frequency, which coincides with a similar dependence for the actuator thrust.