Effect of dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuators on non-equilibrium hypersonic flows

A numerical study employing discontinuous Galerkin method demonstrating net surface heat reduction for a cylindrical body in Mach 17 hypersonic flow is presented. This application focuses on using sinusoidal dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuators to inject momentum near the stagnation point. A 5 species finite rate air chemistry model completes the picture by analyzing the effect of the actuator on the flow chemistry. With low velocity near the stagnation point, the plasma actuator sufficiently modifies the fluid momentum. This results in redistribution of the integrated surface heating load on the body. Specifically, a particular configuration of normally pinching plasma actuation is predicted to reduce the surface heat flux at the stagnation point. An average reduction of 0.246% for the integrated and a maximum reduction of 7.68% are reported for the surface heat flux. The temperature contours in the fluid flow (with maximum temperature over 12 000 K) are pinched away from the stagnation point, thus resulting in reduced thermal load. Plasma actuation in this configuration also affects the species concentration distribution near the wall, in addition to the temperature gradient. The combined effect of both, thus results in an average reduction of 0.0986% and a maximum reduction of 4.04% for non-equilibrium calculations. Thus, this study successfully demonstrates the impact of sinusoidal dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuation on the reduction of thermal load on a hypersonic body.