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Electroaerodynamic (EAD) propulsion, which produces a thrust force by electrostatic means, has been proposed as a method of electric airplane propulsion which is solid-state and nearly silent and produces no combustion emissions. Previous work demonstrated that EAD is capable of sustaining flight of heavier-than-air airplanes. The most successful EAD propulsion devices have thus far used a direct current (DC) corona discharge to produce ions and the same DC field to accelerate them. However, these corona discharge EAD devices are subject to a performance trade-off where increasing thrust reduces efficiency (thrust-to-power ratio). This is a key barrier to practical adoption. Here, we show that by using a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) instead of a corona discharge to produce ions, while still using a DC field to accelerate them, higher thrust and thrust-to-power can be achieved. We identify operating regimes for this thruster, optimize the electrical characteristics of the DBD ion source, and find that the thrust-to-power can reach up to 20 N/kW at a thrust of 50 mN/m and up to 10 N/kW at 150 mN/m—in both cases, approximately twice that of the equivalent corona discharge devices. With lower power draw for the same thrust, DBD enhanced EAD propulsion devices could increase the endurance of EAD airplanes and begin to enable the design of practically useful solid-state aircraft.

Recent studies in electro-aerodynamic (EAD) propulsion have stimulated the need for lightweight power converters providing outputs at tens of kilovolts and hundreds of watts [1] [2]. This paper demonstrates a design of a lightweight high-voltage converter operating from a 160-200 V dc input and providing dc output of up to 600 W at 40 kV. It operates at around 500 kHz and achieves a specific power of 1.2 kW/kg. This is considerably lighter than comparable industrial and academic designs at this power level. High voltage converters generally comprise an inverter, a step-up transformer and a rectifier, with the large needed voltage gain distributed among these stages. Several means of realizing these stages are compared in terms of weight. The weight of the converter is minimized by properly selecting and optimizing the design and the voltage gain of each stage within the constraints of device limitations and losses. A prototype circuit is developed based on this approach and used to drive an EAD-propulsion system for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). In addition to addressing the power conversion needs for EAD, this research can potentially benefit the development of lightweight high-voltage converters in many other applications where weight and size are important.

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