Chinese Journal of Aeronautics, (2015),28(2): 368–376

Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics

& Beihang University
Chinese Journal of Aeronautics
[email protected]
www.sciencedirect.com

Flow separation control on swept wing with

nanosecond pulse driven DBD plasma actuators
Zhao Guangyin, Li Yinghong, Liang Hua *, Han Menghu, Wu Yun

Science and Technology on Plasma Dynamics Laboratory, Air Force Engineering University, Xi’an 710038, China

Received 9 April 2014; revised 10 September 2014; accepted 10 October 2014

Available online 2 March 2015

KEYWORDS Abstract A 15 swept wing with dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator is designed.
Dielectric barrier discharge; Experimental study of flow separation control with nanosecond pulsed plasma actuation is
Flow control; performed at flow velocity up to 40 m/s. The effects of the actuation frequency and voltage on
Flow separation; the aerodynamic performance of the swept wing are evaluated by the balanced force and pressure
Nanosecond pulse; measurements in the wind tunnel. At last, the performances on separation flow control of the three
Plasma; types of actuators with plane and saw-toothed exposed electrodes are compared. The optimal actua-
Swept wing tion frequency for the flow separation control on the swept wing is detected, namely the reduced
frequency is 0.775, which is different from 2-D airfoil separation control. There exists a threshold
voltage for the low swept wing flow control. Before the threshold voltage, as the actuation voltage
increases, the control effects become better. The maximum lift is increased by 23.1% with the drag
decreased by 22.4% at 14, compared with the base line. However, the best effects are obtained on
actuator with plane exposed electrode in the low-speed experiment and the abilities of saw-toothed
actuators are expected to be verified under high-speed conditions.
ª 2015 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of CSAA & BUAA. This is an
open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction associated with plasma actuators include the absence of com-

plicated mechanical systems, low weights and sizes, operation
Plasma flow control is a booming focus of aerodynamics and over a broad range of frequencies, relative low power con-
aerothermodynamics fields for its potential application pro- sumption and decrease of parasitic drag associated with many
spects in drag reduction and lift augmentation of aircraft.1 passive control systems. As described and researched in many
The main distinct advantages of plasma flow control research papers,2,3 the typical dielectric barrier discharge
(DBD) plasma actuator used for flow separation control is
depicted in Fig. 1. There are two main forms of discharge used
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 29 84787527.
for the separation control––alternating current (AC)-DBD and
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (G. Zhao), lianghua82702@ nanosecond pulse (NS)-DBD discharge. When an AC high
tom.com (H. Liang).
voltage is applied on the electrodes and the voltage amplitude
Peer review under responsibility of Editorial Committee of CJA.
is high enough, the air near the electrodes is weakly ionized
and an oriented wall jet is generated. Such flow acceleration
provides effective control of velocity profile in the boundary
Production and hosting by Elsevier layer, laminar-turbulent transition and flow separation.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cja.2014.12.036
1000-9361 ª 2015 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of CSAA & BUAA.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Flow separation control on swept wing with nanosecond pulse driven DBD plasma actuators 369

the effectiveness of this kind of actuator on different airfoils

under different conditions, and the authority of separation
control has been demonstrated at the Ma up to 0.74.
Leading edge separation control on high-lift airfoil with
NS-DBD was studied by Little et al.10 at Re = 1 · 106. Also,
experimental investigation of NACA0015 airfoil stall
separation suppression by spanwise NS-DBD is performed in
Fig. 1 Schematic diagram of plasma aerodynamic actuator. Ref. 13.
In Ref. 14, leading edge separation control authority on
However, the flow control effects decrease with the Reynolds NACA0015 airfoil is demonstrated at various post-stall angles
number Re and Mach number Ma increase. of attack for Re and Ma up to 1.15 · 106 and 0.26 respectively.
The mechanism of AC discharge plasma actuation for flow It is interesting that for the low Re (0.25 · 106), low angle of
control is momentum effects due to ionic wind created by the attack (14) case, the frequency of actuation is not critical.
discharge, which accelerate gas in the boundary layer. At higher flow speed (Re = 1.15 · 106, Ma = 0.26), the
However, this ionic wind can only provide flow acceleration efficiency of this control mechanism depends on the frequency
up to several meters per second in the boundary layer, so the of actuation with the best results obtained at F+  2. In
effectiveness is limited for flow control at higher Re and Ma. Ref. 15, the dependence of the effect on the position of the
Whereas, the mechanism of flow control by NS-DBD with actuator on the wing was studied, showing that the most
very small induced flow velocity (<1 m/s)4 is different. The effective position of the actuator is on the leading edge.
flow field induced by the NS-DBD is given in Fig. 2, where f While the optimal reduced frequency is F+  1, which is
is frequency, Vp–p is peak to peak voltage. different from Ref. 14 The results may be caused by different
The NS-DBD transfers little momentum to the flow but experimental conditions.
generates compression waves, which is suspected to be similar Though found to be superior to the AC-DBD plasma
to mechanism of localized arc filament plasma actuators5 used actuators for controlling leading edge separation, the
in the high-speed flow control. It is supposed that the prop- NS-DBD plasma actuator is ineffective in controlling
agation of shock wave and formation of large-scale vortex, separation over the deflected trailing edge flap.16.
which are produced from the layer of the hot gas, leads to Recently, the NS-DBD was used to affect the strong shock
the separation elimination. This hot gas is generated during wave ahead of a circular cylinder in a Ma = 5 flow.17 The
the fast thermalization process,6–8 in which the fractional dis- results show that the shock wave was about 25% further away
charge energy is converted into heat in less than 1 ls under from the cylinder when the plasma actuator was on.
atmospheric pressure, and then the shock wave is induced However, most experiments for leading-edge separation
for the instant heating. control are conducted on two-dimensional airfoil. Because of
Flow control on airfoil with NS-DBD has been experimen- the effects from wing tip, wing root and sweepback, the flow
tally investigated by many groups in recent years. The possibil- over swept wings are more complex than that over the 2-D
ity of such fast thermalization was shown in Ref. 2 and further airfoil. In this paper, the effects of NS-DBD for flow
developed in Ref. 9. Previous experiments1,2,10–12 have shown separation control on a swept wing are investigated. Also,
the influence laws of the actuation parameters on the control
effect are studied.

2. Flow separation over a 3D swept wing

In order to reveal the flow separation characteristic over the

swept wing and then guide the disposal of the actuator, sim-
ulation for base flow was carried out. The model used was a
swept wing with a 15 sweepback and with NACA0015 airfoil
as its section. The swept wing has a constant chord length of
160 mm and the whole model has a span of 800 mm. All the
computations were performed at a chord-based Reynolds
number of Re = 5.2 · 105 (freestream Mach number of
Ma = 0.147). The numerical method used was based on a
three-dimensional incompressible finite-volume scheme for
the solution of the Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes
(RANS) equations. The three-dimensional method was fully
implicit and of second-order accuracy in space based on the
Semi-implicit method for pressure-linked equations
(SIMPLE) pressure correction algorithm. Convective fluxes
were approximated by second-order upwind scheme. For the
modeling of the turbulent fluid motion, the realizable k–x
model was used. The surface flow at different angles of attack
a is shown in Fig. 3. The section with streamline was located at
Fig. 2 Flow field induced by NS-DBD. z = 250 mm from the wing root.
370 G. Zhao et al.

Fig. 3 Limiting streamline of upper wing surface and streamline of section (z = 250 mm) at different angles of attack.

With the attack angle increases, flow separation occurs near pressure taps. The chordwise taps, located at z = 165 mm sec-
the trailing edge firstly. Then, separation moves to the upstream, tion from the wing root, are situated at 9%c, 12%c, 15%c,
and eventually lead to stall. Also, because of the influences of 32%c, 35%c, 38%c, 56%c, 60%c and 64%c respectively,
wing tip, wing root and sweepback, when the attack angle is high where c is the chord length of the wing.
enough, the wing tip stalling before the wing root stalling The DBD plasma actuator consists of electrodes, dielectric
happened. So, different from the flow over an 2-D airfoil, the material and voltage generation system, as depicted in Fig. 1.
flow over a swept wing has distinct three-dimensional effect. Copper tape was used as the electrodes and the Kapton tape
With reference to the simulation results, the similar model was was the dielectric material. The anode was exposed to atmo-
designed, and the experiments were done in a closed-loop wind sphere environment and the cathode was encapsulated under
tunnel at velocity up to 40 m/s. the dielectric material. The two electrodes were separated by
a 0.13 mm thick dielectric made of Kapton film.
3. Experimental setup and test conditions Four types of actuators (Types A, B, C, D) with plane and
saw-toothed high voltage electrodes were designed to investi-
3.1. Experimental setup gate the separation flow control effects. Fig. 5 shows the details
of the plasma actuator arrangements. The Type A actuator,
with anode 3 mm in width and cathode 5 mm in width, was
Fig. 4 shows schematics of the swept wing model. The model is
similar to the Type B. Type A actuator was used in the experi-
made of plexiglas with a 15 sweepback and NACA0015 airfoil
ments to study the effects of flow control from frequency and
as its section. The swept wing has a constant chord length of
voltage. Types B, C, D had the same electrode width and
155 mm and the whole model has a span of 775 mm. In the left
length but different electrode shapes, were used to investigate
wing, 14 pressure taps are distributed along spanwise and
the flow control effects in order to optimize the shape of the
chordwise directions. Fig. 4 depicts the positions of the
actuator for separation flow control.
There is one pair of electrodes deployed on the leading edge
of the swept wing, as can be seen in Fig. 6. The inner gap
between electrodes is zero in all the tests, and the gap position
is defined as the actuation position. Also, all the tests are con-
ducted with actuators mounted at 0% chord length.

3.2. Power supply

High voltage pulses are generated by a nanosecond pulse

generator, which is capable of producing pulses of up to
80 kV of amplitude with rising time of 10–30 ns and full width
half maximum (FWHM) of 30–40 ns. A sample waveform
along with discharge current waveform is shown in Fig. 7. In
the experiments, the applied voltage and the discharge current
are measured by a high voltage probe (Tektronix P6015A) and
a current probe (Tektronix TCP312+TCPA300). Signals are
Fig. 4 Top view of the model and distribution of pressure taps. recorded on an oscilloscope (Tektronix DPO4104).
Flow separation control on swept wing with nanosecond pulse driven DBD plasma actuators 371

Fig. 5 Planforms of three different shape actuators and discharge images of the three actuators (Vp–p = 10 kV, f = 1 kHz).

3.3. Test conditions

The experiments were conducted in one of the low-speed wind

tunnels in Air Force Engineering University. The wind tunnel
is a closed-loop wind tunnel that can operate at velocity up to
80 m/s. The test section of the tunnel is nominally 1.0 m high,
1.2 m wide and 1.5 m long. The turbulence intensity of the free
stream velocity is less than 1%.
Table 1 shows the test conditions of each measurement. The
difference between Types B, C, D has been described in Fig. 5.
The current work contains three main parts. The first part is
Fig. 6 Details of actuator arrangements on wing’s section. separation control research at different frequencies using Type
A actuator in order to find the optimal actuation frequency.
The second part is to research the control effect at different
excitation voltages using Type A actuator. The third part is
for comparison of three different actuators for the separation
control effects, using Types B, C, D actuators. The effects of
flow control by NS-DBD were measured using a six-compo-
nent internal strain gauge balance and electronic pressure scan-
ning valve, as well as flow visualization through thin threads.
The range of the angle of attack varies from 0 to 22 in the
experiments.

4. Presentation of results

The data of the model with plasma off is concluded as the

baseline case and the basic aerodynamic characteristics of
the model are tested three times.
The cable interference and the electric-magnetic interfer-
ence (EMI) from the plasma actuator system would influence
Fig. 7 Pulse voltage shape with discharge current waveform of the aerodynamic force measurement. Those interferences are
nanosecond pulse generator (Vp–p = 12 kV, f = 1 kHz, actuator eliminated by the refinement of the wind tunnel test procedure,
length of 150 mm). and by the grounding and shielding of the electric equipment.

Table 1 Wind tunnel test conditions.

Parameter Type A Type A Types B,C,D
5 5
Reynolds number Re 3.7 · 10 3.7 · 10 2.8 · 105
Free stream velocity U1 (m/s) 40 40 30
Frequency f (Hz) 200, 260, 390, 520, 770, 1030, 1550 200 200
Peak to peak voltage Vp–p (kV) 9 7, 9, 11 11
372 G. Zhao et al.

When the incoming flow velocity is zero, the wing’s aerody-

namic performances are measured with and without plasma
applied on the actuator. One of the results is shown in
Fig. 8, Vx represents the electric signal of the model’s drag.
The line of plasma on demonstrates very good agreement with
the line of plasma off, which means that the electromagnetic
interference for the measurement can be ignored. The good
agreement of the two lines also shows the stability and repeata-
bility of the measurement system.

4.1. Type A: flow control effects dependence on discharge

frequency

The frequency of NS DBD is an important parameter in

plasma flow control. As has been researched in many
papers14,15, there is an optimal frequency in 2-D airfoil flow
separation control. The frequency of NS DBD is believed to
be optimum when the reduced frequency Fþ ¼ fc=U1 ¼ 1. In
this paper, the swept wing’s flow control effects dependence
on discharge frequency was researched under constant dis-
charge voltage 9 kV with Type A actuator. Experimental
results are shown in Fig. 9. The base lines in Fig. 9 show that
the force measurements are stable and reliable. At different fre-
quencies (f = 200, 260, 390, 520, 770, 1030, 1550 Hz), all the
control cases can obtain effective control effects compared
with the baseline. For the 3-D flow control, if we defined a
reduced frequency the same as 2-D case, the corresponding
F+ = fc/U1 = 0.775, 1.0, 1.5, 2, 3, 4, 6.
Flow separation control at all the actuation frequencies can
delay the stall occurrence. The decrease of the lift at the post-
stall region is also smooth, compared with the abrupt change
of base line.
It can be seen from Fig. 9 that there is obvious difference
between the lift coefficients at different frequencies when the
actuator was ignited. Lower frequency could result in better Fig. 9 Lift and drag coefficients at different discharge frequen-
lift augmentation and drag reduction. In the tests, the best fre- cies (U1 = 40 m/s).
quency is 200 Hz, corresponding to the reduced frequency
F+ = 0.775, with lift increased by 21.3% and drag reduced
by 15.8% at 15. deep-stall stage (a > 15). In this stage, the dependence of
The control effect in post-stall stage can be analyzed from the lift increment on the frequency is obvious. The two stages
two stages, the first stage is in the slight-stall angles may correspond to different control mechanisms. In the first
(a 6 15). In this range, the lift increment is not dependent stage, the separated flow is sensitive to the actuation which
on the actuator operation frequency. The second stage is the would intensify the turbulence, and then the flow’s resistivity
to the adverse pressure gradient was enhanced so as to make
it attached. In the second stage, the vortical flow control
may be the mechanism, for a vortex was induced by each
plasma actuation and the actuation frequency determines the
number of concurrent vortices over the wing. So, there exists
an optimal actuation frequency in the second stage. The
hypothesis for explaining the control mechanism needs further
investigation.
The pressure measurements also show the same influence
law of actuation frequency. Fig. 10 gives the pressure dis-
tributions on the upper surface of the left wing at angle of
attack of 16. From the chordwise pressure distribution,
shown in Fig. 10(a), we can find that the lower leading edge
suction pressure without actuation indicates a flow separation
at the leading edge, while high suction pressure indicates that
flow is attached after actuation. From the spanwise pressure
distribution in Fig. 10(b), it is found that the different suction
Fig. 8 Electric signal of model’s drag with/without discharges at pressures show that the flow’s 3-D features are obvious on this
0 m/s. low swept wing. Compared with the wing root side, the wing
Flow separation control on swept wing with nanosecond pulse driven DBD plasma actuators 373

4.2. Type A: flow control effects dependence on actuation

voltage

The plasma actuation intensity, related to the discharge

voltage, is an important parameter in plasma flow control
experiments. The influence of the discharge voltage was inves-
tigated in this paper with pulse frequency fixed at 200 Hz,
which was demonstrated as the optimal frequency above.
Fig. 11 shows the dependence of the measured lift coefficient
CL and drag coefficient CD on the discharge voltage at
different angles of attack. When the plasma was applied on
the leading edge near the stall condition, the lift increased
and drag decreased to different degrees at different voltages.
Ref. 7 observed that the coupled energy per unit length is
basically controlled by the peak voltage and is nearly indepen-
dent from the actuator length and the voltage rise time. So
higher peak voltage means more energy transferred to the flow
instantaneously. Near the stall region, as the discharge voltage
increases, the lift of the swept wing increases. Whereas, the
drag of the swept wing decreases with the discharge voltage
increases at the stall angles. There is almost no obvious distinc-
tion between the 9 kV lines and 11 kV lines, indicating that the
threshold voltage appears to be 9 kV for flow control at
40 m/s. It can be seen that the critical angle of attack increased
by approximately 3 (18 with discharges against 15 without
discharges), and at 15 of attack angle, the lift coefficient
increased by up to 21%. Also, a large decrease of the drag
coefficient has been observed, about 19%.
The conception of threshold voltage has been shown in
Ref. 4 and has been validated in experiments. In this paper,
the threshold voltage is about 9 kV. It is demonstrated that
there also exists a threshold voltage for the low swept wing
Fig. 10 Pressure of upper surface in spanwise and chordwise flow control. Also, Fig. 11(c) gives the lift-drag ratio with/
direction (U1 = 40 m/s). without discharges at different angles of attack. Between 15
and 18, the actuation makes lift-drag ratio increase compared
tip side’s pressure is lower, indicating that the flow separation with the base line, with the largest increase of 49% at 15.
at the tip side occurs earlier than the root side.
The pressure distributions at different actuation frequencies 4.3. Types B, C, D: separation control effects of three different
show that actuation at 200 Hz leads to the largest suction pres- actuators
sure, consistent with the force measurements by the balance in
Fig. 9. Three different actuators’ flow control effects were compared.
We know that at large angles of attack, to keep the lift at a Considering the optimal actuation frequency and threshold
relatively high level is more important than to reduce the drag. voltage, investigations were carried out at a fixed frequency
From this point, the best frequency for separation control is 200 Hz and a fixed voltage 11 kV. Because of different shapes
200 Hz, corresponding to the reduced frequency of 0.775. of the high electrodes, the aerodynamic characteristics of the

Fig. 11 Dependence of the measured lift and drag coefficients on the discharge voltage at different angles of attack.
374 G. Zhao et al.

base case were measured for each type arrangement of actua- 23.1% augment in lift and 22.4% reduction in drag at 14,
tors at free stream velocity of 30 m/s. Then, the actuated cases compared with base case. However, the saw-toothed actuators
were compared with their own bases. The results are shown in can also get better effects relative to their own base lines. For
Fig. 12. the saw-toothed actuators, the discharge region is relatively
From the lift and drag coefficient lines, all the three kinds of concentrated; the local discharge energy will be much higher
actuations can postpone the wing’s stall, with lift increase and than plane actuators. Just like the plasma synthetic jet,
drag decrease in the post-stall regions. discharges in the cavity can induce high-speed jet and high-
In order to give a more vivid comparison between the three intensity shock waves. So the shock wave induced by the
actuators, we compared the lift and drag coefficients at 14 and saw-toothed actuator is supposed to be stronger than that of
15, with results shown in Table 2. the plane actuator. In this paper, the freestream velocity is
For the separation flow control at the post-stall angles (14 relatively low, the required energy for separation flow control
and 15), the best effects are obtained in Type B case, with is not high, even the AC-DBD actuator can control the

Fig. 12 Lift and drag coefficient lines with/without discharges for the three actuators.
Flow separation control on swept wing with nanosecond pulse driven DBD plasma actuators 375

Table 2 Relative changes of lift and drag for three actuators. Acknowledgements

Actuator a = 14 a = 15 The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their
DCL (%) DCD (%) DCL (%) DCD (%) critical and constructive review of the manuscript. This work is
Type B 23.1 22.4 23.7 20.5 founded by National Natural Science Foundation of China
Type C 7.5 15.2 12.0 15.6 under contract Nos. 51336011, 51276197, and 51207169.
Type D 15.5 22.0 21.5 22.0
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17. Bisek NJ, Poggie J, Nishihara M, Adamovich I. Computational Li Yinghong is a professor in Air Force Engineering University. His
and experimental analysis of Mach 5 air flow over a cylinder with a main research interests include plasma dynamics, aeroengine fault
nanosecond pulse discharge. 50th AIAA aerospace sciences meeting diagnosis, reliability analysis, advanced control and stability analysis.
including the new horizons forum and aerospace exposition; 2012.
Liang Hua is a lecturer of Department of Aircraft and Power
Zhao Guangyin is a doctoral student of Air Force Engineering Engineering in Air Force Engineering University. His main research
University and his main research field is flow control over airfoil/wing field is flow control using plasma actuation.
using plasma actuation.