Mean Model of the Dielectric BarrierDischarge Plasma Actuator IncludingPhotoionization


 A numerical algorithm is proposed for simulation of the AC-Dielectric Barrier Discharge plasma actuators including photo-ionization. The computational bottleneck related to a very long computing time has been circumvented by suppressing the discharge pulses and proposing the mean discharge model. It incorporates an artiﬁcial damping term into the electron transport equation to suppress the formation of pulses, which signiﬁcantly accelerates the simulation. Based on the ﬂuid description of three generic species: electrons, positive and negative ions, the model accounts for the drift, diﬀusion, and reaction terms. The reaction coeﬃcients are extracted from the Boltzmann equation considering the local ﬁeld approximation. A self-sustained discharge is achieved by including a Helmholtz model for photo-ionization during the positive voltage phase, and the secondary electron emission from the metal surface, during the negative voltage phase. The proposed methodology compromises the computational burdens of the ﬁrst-principle approaches and inadequacy of the simplistic models in incorporating the problem physics. The accuracy of the proposed methodology has been validated by comparing the computational and experimental data for the electrical and ﬂow characteristics of a laboratory actuator.