Characteristics of nanosecond pulse surface dielectric barrier discharge in air flow

Nanosecond pulse plasma flow control, as an effective active flow control technique, has been widely investigated around the globe. Investigating the characteristics of the nanosecond pulsed surface dielectric barrier discharge is rather crucial to understanding the mechanism of nanosecond pulsed discharge. A circuit model was developed for surface dielectric barrier discharge actuator. Wavelet soft-threshold denoisation was employed to denoise the applied voltage and the total loop current recorded in the experiment. Based on the analysis of the circuit model, a method of extracting the discharge current from the experimental data was proposed. Furthermore, the influences of three factors, namely the applied voltage, the repetition frequency and the polarity of the pulse, on the characteristics of the discharge current, charge transport and total deposited energy were examined. The results show that there exist two discharges under the rising and falling period of one single pulse; the discharge current, maximum transporting charge and deposited energy during the discharge are polarity-dependent, and positively related with the applied voltage. Besides, the maximum transporting charge and deposited energy firstly decrease and then increase with the increase of repetitive frequency. Moreover, the repetitive frequency has an impact on the peak value and the width of the discharge current. This paper can be helpful to the study on the development of nanosecond pulse surface dielectric barrier discharge and the calculation of deposited energy into plasma. © 2015 Chin. Soc. for Elec. Eng..