Electric and plasma characteristics of RF discharge plasma actuation under varying pressures

The electric and plasma characteristics of RF discharge plasma actuation under varying pressure have been investigated experimentally. As the pressure increases, the shapes of charge–voltage Lissajous curves vary, and the discharge energy increases. The emission spectra show significant difference as the pressure varies. When the pressure is 1000 Pa, the electron temperature is estimated to be 4.139 eV, the electron density and the vibrational temperature of plasma are 4.71×1011 cm−3 and 1.27 eV, respectively. The ratio of spectral lines which describes the electron temperature hardly changes when the pressure varies between 5000–30000 Pa, while it increases remarkably with the pressure below 5000 Pa, indicating a transition from filamentary discharge to glow discharge. The characteristics of emission spectrum are obviously influenced by the loading power. With more loading power, both of the illumination and emission spectrum intensity increase at 10000 Pa. The pin–pin electrode RF discharge is arc-like at power higher than 33 W, which results in a macroscopic air temperature increase.