Aerodynamic Drag Reduction and Optimization of MIRA Model Based on Plasma Actuator

Abstract

Active flow control of surface dielectric barrier discharge (SDBD) plasma is a technology that converts electrical energy into kinetic energy to achieve flow control. Its main application areas are concentrated in the aviation field. Undoubtedly, few studies have applied it in the field of automobile flow control. Meanwhile, during high-speed driving, there is a serious airflow separation phenomenon at the rear of notch-back cars, which brings a large area of negative pressure to the back of the cars. Due to the huge pressure difference between the front and end of the cars, it will increase the driving drag and fuel cost of the car. In this context, we seek to discuss the control effect on the airflow separation at the rear of the notch-back by using the phenomenological numerical simulation method of plasma flow control. Firstly, the plasma actuator is arranged separately on the rear end of the roof, c-pillar, upper and side of the trunk to study the control effect of airflow separation. After that, the plasma actuators at each position are combined and actuated simultaneously. We try to observe the control effect of airflow separation and select the combination with the best drag reduction effect. In the third stage, an efficient global optimization (EGO) algorithm based on kriging response surface is applied to optimize the supply voltage of the best combination that has been obtained before and obtain the driving voltage parameter of each actuator optimized under this combination. The results show that when plasma actuation is applied at four locations, only the actuation applied to the side of the luggage compartment has a significant drag reduction effect, while in other cases, the drag coefficient will increase. Specifically, drag reduction is better when the actuation is applied at four positions simultaneously. The maximum drag reduction coefficient of the car is reduced by 13.17%.

Performance recovery of plasma actuators in wet conditions

“…Many studies have shown the potential use of plasma actuators as flow control devices across a wide range of flow applications. Examples include control of transition to turbulence [8][9][10], drag reduction for highway vehicles [11][12][13], lift to drag ratio modification for flow over a wing [14,15], flow modification over bluff bodies [13,16], blade vortex interaction noise control [17], flight control for small aircrafts and projectiles [18,19] and deicing application [20][21][22]. However, environmental ruggedness and performance reliability of these actuators must be studied before their practical implementation for any external flow applications.…”

Icing Mitigation by MEMS-Fabricated Surface Dielectric Barrier Discharge

“…Whereas the related topic of plasma actuators (PA) for flow control applications is widely studied [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20], there is recently a growing interest in the study of surface dielectric barrier discharges (SDBDs) as an anti-icing and de-icing system [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. Probably Meng et al [24] and Cai Jinsheng et al [21] were the first who reported experimental results indicating that SDBDs can work as an anti/de-icing system.…”

Surface dielectric barrier discharge (sDBD) for flow control in plasma conversion

“…2b. This is a typical approach for simulating plasma actuators [21][22][23]. In principle, also a plasma model could be employed to actually calculate the ion wind as it is accelerated by the propagating streamers.…”