† Corresponding author. E-mail:
Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51407197, 51522606, 51336011, 91541120, and 11472306).
Plasma synthetic jet actuator (PSJA) has a wide application prospect in the high-speed flow control field for its high jet velocity. In this paper, the influence of the air pressure on the performance of a two-electrode PSJA is investigated by the schlieren method in a large range from 7 kPa to 100 kPa. The energy consumed by the PSJA is roughly the same for all the pressure levels. Traces of the precursor shock wave velocity and the jet front velocity vary a lot for different pressures. The precursor shock wave velocity first decreases gradually and then remains at 345 m/s as the air pressure increases. The peak jet front velocity always appears at the first appearance of a jet, and it decreases gradually with the increase of the air pressure. A maximum precursor shock wave velocity of 520 m/s and a maximum jet front velocity of 440 m/s are observed at the pressure of 7 kPa. The averaged jet velocity in one period ranges from 44 m/s to 54 m/s for all air pressures, and it drops with the rising of the air pressure. High velocities of the precursor shock wave and the jet front indicate that this type of PSJA can still be used to influence the high-speed flow field at 7 kPa.
Nowadays, plasma aerodynamic actuators have been widely investigated in the active flow control field, including surface dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuators, microwave discharge plasma actuators, and so on.[1,2] With the advantages of no mechanical moving parts, simple structure, flexible control, high actuation frequency, rapid response, and reliable working capacity, these actuators have shown a successful and effective application in the low-speed flow field, such as the stall separation control and the aircraft performance enhancement.[3] However, as for the supersonic and hypersonic flow control, a poor control capacity and indistinctive control effect are demonstrated by using the above actuators.
In order to improve the supersonic flow control effect, a new type of plasma aerodynamic actuator called a plasma synthetic jet actuator (PSJA) has been developed by John Hopkins University.[4] It combines the pin to pin discharge with the synthetic jet technology together and its working period usually includes three stages. In the first stage, the air in the cavity is heated quickly by arc discharge, and both the air temperature and pressure increase rapidly. In the second stage, the air in the cavity is injected into the surrounding environment. In the third step, the continuous injection produces a local vacuum in the cavity and draws the fresh air back into the cavity, waiting for the next working period.[5] PSJA has attractive characteristics of zero net mass flow, simple structure, flexible control, and fast response. Most importantly, it can produce a high speed jet, thus showing a promising application in the supersonic flow control.[6]
Currently, two main parameters affecting the PSJA performance are widely investigated. One is called the structural parameters including the cavity volume, the orifice diameter, and so on. The other called the electric parameters usually constitutes discharge type, applied voltage, actuation frequency, pulse energy, and so on. Many methods (such as high speed schlieren system, pressure sensor, and particle image velocimetry) have been adopted to investigate the PSJA performance (jet field, jet velocity, and pressure in the cavity).[7,8] Cybyk et al. investigated the influence of the actuator geometrical parameters on the performance of PSJA through experiments and numerical simulations. The results show that with the increase of the volume, the peak jet front velocity and the jet duration decrease. The bigger the orifice diameter is, the shorter the jet duration will be.[9–11] Compared with PSJA driven by inductive power supplies (IPS), the PSJA driven by capacitive power supplies (CPS) has a higher energy deposition rate and a more powerful jet with higher velocity and shorter expulsion time. Besides, it heats the gas less significantly than the IPS.[12,13] A larger discharge size leads to a higher jet front velocity and a higher precursor shock wave velocity.[14] Below 400 Hz, the jet front velocity remains unchanged, while it decreases when the frequency exceeds 500 Hz.[15] Santhanakrishnan et al. investigated the pulsing frequency on the jet characteristics experimentally and found that the maximum velocity was obtained in the 10 Hz range among three different frequencies (1 Hz, 10 Hz, and 100 Hz) in quiescent flow.[16,17] Capacitors with three different capacitances were used to investigate the influence of the capacitance on the performance of PSJA. The results show that with the capacitance rising, the penetration depth, the exhaust time, and the jet velocity increase, with a maximum jet velocity of 495 m/s.[18–22] Moreover, Zong et al. studied the influence of the capacitor energy on the jet front velocity, the jet duration time, and the jet affected area. With the increase of the capacitor energy, the jet front velocity always goes up, while the jet duration time first increases and then keeps constant. The jet affected area has the same change law with the jet duration time.[23,24]
In those researches, the working pressure, a rather significant parameter influencing the PSJA performance, was not quantitatively analyzed. Emerick et al. studied the PSJA characterizations in quiescent and supersonic flowfields. For a single-orifice actuator, the maximum blast wave reached 400 m/s. The jet front velocity at 60 kPa was 310 m/s, while it was 240 m/s at 100 kPa.[25] Wang et al. investigated the effect of the pressure on the performance of PSJA.[26,27] The results show that the breakdown voltage, the discharge current, and the energy deposition are higher for higher air pressure levels; the peak jet front velocity and the precursor shock wave velocity reach approximately 460 m/s and 530 m/s respectively by the pressure conditions. However, the extension of the air pressure in this research is relatively narrow (10–100 kPa). A wider air pressure on the performance of PSJA should be analyzed. Moreover, the changing processes of the jet front velocity and the precursor shock wave velocity with time for different air pressures need to be exploited.
In this paper, a sequential discharge power supply (nanosecond discharge-capacitive discharge) is adopted to feed a two-electrode PSJA. The influence of the air pressure on the discharge characteristics and the PSJA performance (the flow field evolution, jet front velocity, precursor shock wave intensity, and so on) is investigated with the electrical diagnostic system and the schlieren system, respectively.
As shown in Fig.
The power supply system of the two-electrode PSJA in this paper is different from that of the normal two-electrode PSJA. As shown in Fig.
The experimental steps are as follows. Firstly, the DC power supply charges capacitor 1. Next, DG535 generates a TTL trigger signal. Then the high-voltage pulsed power supply receives the signal and produces a high voltage to breakdown the gap between the two electrodes. Finally, the energy stored in capacitor 1 is released until it is difficult to maintain the discharge channel. The operation is in a single pulse mode with the pulsing frequency set at 1 Hz.
In the experiment, the PSJA is placed in a vacuum chamber. The vacuum chamber has two optical glasses, which makes it easy to detect the jet by the schlieren system clearly. The vacuum chamber is connected to a vacuum pump which can make the pressure in the chamber range from 300 Pa to 100 kPa. In this experiment, the vacuum chamber ambient air pressure ranges from 7 kPa to 100 kPa.
In this experiment, the measurement equipment of the electrical parameters includes an oscilloscope (Tektronix DPO4104), a high voltage probe (Tektronix P6015A), and a current probe (Pearson 2878). They are used to measure the applied voltage and the discharge current. The instantaneous discharge power and the total discharge energy are obtained based on the measured voltage and current.
The flow structure of the plasma synthetic jet is often visualized by the schlieren system, which transforms the density variation into the image brightness. The schlieren system consists of a continuous Xe lamp, two concave mirrors (diameter 30 cm, focus length 1.5 m), a knife, and a high-speed CCD camera (Phantom, V2511). The light emitted from the light source passes through the flow region. The camera is placed after the focal point of the second concave mirror. In order to enhance the image contrast, a knife is put in front of the CCD camera, as shown in Fig.
The high-speed CCD camera used in this research work has the exposure time of 1 μs and the framing rate of 70043 Hz. The air pressure in the vacuum storehouse varies from 7 kPa to 100 kPa.
Figure
Figure
Figure
The jet evolution patterns for different air pressures (7 kPa, 30 kPa, 40 kPa, 70 kPa, and 100 kPa) and different time (14.3 μs, 42.9 μs, 100.1 μs, 214.5 μs, 443.3 μs, and 900.9 μs) are shown in Fig.
As shown in Fig.
The jet front velocity and the precursor shock wave velocity at different time can be calculated based on the positions of the jet front and the shock wave in the flow field. The accuracy depends on the image resolution and the image interval. In the experiment, the resolution of the schlieren images is 0.14 mm/pixel, and the interval is about 14.3 μs. In order to improve the data accuracy, five results acquired in the same conditions are averaged.
The variations of the jet front velocity for different air pressures are shown in Fig.
For different air pressure levels, the variations of the peak jet front velocity are shown in Fig.
Figure
For different air pressures (7 kPa, 30 kPa, 50 kPa, and 100 kPa), variations of the precursor shock wave velocity are shown in Fig.
The high jet front velocity, the high jet averaged velocity, and the high shock wave velocity provide the strongest evidence that PSJ still has a control force at low pressure and a wide application prospect in the high-speed flow control field.
As shown in Fig.
The air temperature decreases along the jet direction. When the distance between the shock wave and the orifice is bigger, the local air temperature and the shock wave speed are lower. Because the distance between the second shock wave and the orifice is smaller than that between the precursor shock wave and the orifice all the time, the second shock wave velocity is always faster than the precursor one. So with the increase of time, the distance between the precursor shock wave and the second shock wave decreases gradually.
The influence of the air pressure on the performance of a two-electrode PSJA, including the flow field evolution, the jet front velocity, and the precursor shock wave velocity, is experimentally investigated. The electrical characteristics and the schlieren images are obtained in a large scope of pressure ranging from 7 kPa to 100 kPa.
With the air pressure rising, the discharge energy almost remains constant. The flow field evolution at high pressure is quite different from that at low pressure. At high pressure, the shock wave appears with a vortex pair in the beginning, and the jet keeps in step with the vortex pair. However at low pressure, the jet and the precursor shock wave appear in the beginning while there is no obvious vortex. Besides, the maximum jet propagation distance is longer at low pressure than that at high pressure.
The jet front velocity in a period always decreases at high pressure (> 50 kPa), while a fluctuation of the jet front velocity occurs during its decay at low pressure. The peak jet front velocity decreases gradually with the increase of the air pressure and reaches 440 m/s at 7 kPa. For different air pressures, the precursor shock wave velocity shows a gradual decrease first and then keeps almost constant at 345 m/s. At 7 kPa, the maximum shock wave velocity reaches 515 m/s. The high-speed shock wave and jet at low pressure show that this type of PSJA can still be used to control the high-speed flow field at 7 kPa.
Further research should aim at the characteristic of PSJA at lower pressure and enhance the strength of plasma synthetic jet at low pressure.
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