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Sherman 1998). Then, different groups already having background experiences on corona discharges and their interactions with quiescent or moving flows formed a new highly motivated community that contributes to the dissemination of the advantages and relevancy of non-thermal plasma discharges as an alternative to conventional flow actuators (Moreau 2007;Corke et al. 2009Corke et al. , 2010. Rapidly, the number of publications in journals and conference exponentially grows to finally become a full interdisciplinary research field. The sudden interest for surface dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) energized by AC high voltage for manipulating airflows was initially motivated by the easy implementation of these actuators and a possible retrofitting on existing airfoils. They have the capability to be mounted at the surface of linear or curved objects with a minimal protrusion in the flow. Beside, their location can be changed faster than other active actuators that require a new model for each new position of actuation. The amplitude and frequency of the electrohydrodynamic (EHD) force produced by the surface plasma are directly connected to the driven electrical signal, this being a clear advantage for parametric studies on the sensibility of one flow to well-defined perturbations. Indeed, the EHD force (also referred as EFD force for electro-fluid dynamic) and the resulting produced flow called electric wind or ionic wind are due to electric field that acts on charged species. These charged species are produced by physical phenomena such as ionization, recombination, attachment, detachment and photoionization, which occur at timescale of a few picoseconds (Boeuf et al. 2009a). Subsequently, the produced body force, despite being low-pass filtered by fluid mechanical laws (viscosity, energy exchanges, dissipation) to produce electric wind, has a high bandwidth. Plasma actuators, and more specifically dielectric barrier discharge actuators, have demonstrated their authority to Abstract The present paper is a wide review on AC surface dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) actuators applied to airflow control. Both electrical and mechanical characteristics of surface DBD are presented and discussed. The first half of the present paper gives the last results concerning typical single plate-to-plate surface DBDs supplied by a sine high voltage. The discharge current, the plasma extension and its morphology are firstly analyzed. Then, time-averaged and time-resolved measurements of the produced electrohydrodynamic force and of the resulting electric wind are commented. The second half of the paper concerns a partial list of approaches having demonstrated a significant modification in the discharge behavior and an increasing of its mechanical performances. Typically, single DBDs can produce mean force and electric wind velocity up to 1 mN/W and 7 m/s, respectively. With multi-DBD designs, velocity up to 11 m/s has been measured and force up to 350 mN/m.