Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma devices have been designed and manufactured with microscale dimensions utilizing semiconductor fabrication techniques. Particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements indicate induced wall jet velocities up to 2.0 m/s. Direct force measurements using a torsional balance indicate thrust values up to 3 mN/m at 5 kV pp and 1 kHz and consume an average power of 15 W/m. The measured thrust data is applied in a numerical model to compare simulated velocity flow fields with experimental PIV data. The model shows good agreement with experimental data for the velocity and wall jet thickness for macro device geometries, but inaccurately predicts the downstream velocity decay. Microscale devices demonstrated equivalent 'thrust effectiveness' to macroscale actuators, but with a 31% improvement in mechanical-to-electrical energy conversion efficiency. The microscale DBD actuators occupy an order of magnitude reduction in device footprint and mass, and potentially enable large arrays for distributed flow control applications.

A model for air plasma discharge based on drift-diffusion with local mean energy approximation is described. The model consists of 7 species and 18 reactions. The code is benchmarked with experimental and numerical results for low pressure glow discharge in a cylindrical tube. The code is used to simulate the discharge produced by a wire placed in a rectangular channel with grounded electrodes at the top and bottom walls. The discharge is concentrated near the wire. The actuator acts on the neutral gas through a body force and Joule heating. Around 80%-90% of the electrical power is converted to Joule heating of the neutral gas and the wall. The actuator produces a body force on the order of 0.1 mN/m. The effectiveness of the actuator increases from 100 to 300 V, and plateaus from 300 to 600 V. The results of the study suggest a further exploration of the channel concept. V

The scalability and efficiency of numerical methods on parallel computer architectures is of prime importance as we march towards exascale computing. Classical methods like finite difference schemes and finite volume methods have inherent roadblocks in their mathematical construction to achieve good scalability. These methods are popularly used to solve the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow simulations. The discontinuous Galerkin family of methods for solving continuum partial differential equations has shown promise in realizing parallel efficiency and scalability when approaching petascale computations. In this paper an explicit modal discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method utilizing Implicit Large Eddy Simulation (ILES) is proposed for unsteady turbulent flow simulations involving the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations. A study of the method was performed for the Taylor-Green vortex case at a Reynolds number ranging from 100 to 1600. The polynomial order P = 2 (third order accurate) was found to closely match the Direct Navier-Stokes (DNS) results for all Reynolds numbers tested outside of Re = 1600, which had a normalized RMS error of 3.43 × 10−4 in the dissipation rate for a 603 element mesh. The scalability and performance study of the method was then conducted for a Reynolds number of 1600 for polynomials orders from P = 2 to P = 6. The highest order polynomial that was tested (P = 6) was found to have the most efficient scalability using both the MPI and OpenMP implementations.

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