An experimental study on the thermal characteristics of NS-DBD plasma actuation and application for aircraft icing mitigation

Abstract A comprehensive study was performed to explore the thermal characteristics of NS-dielectric-barrier discharge (DBD) plasma actuation over an airfoil/wing surface and evaluate the anti-/de-icing performance of NS-DBD plasma actuators for aircraft in-flight icing mitigation. While the fundamentals of thermal energy generation and heat transfer in NS-DBD plasma actuation over the airfoil/wing model were described in great details, a series of experiments were conducted to evaluate the effects of different environmental parameters on the heating efficiency of NS-DBD plasma actuators over the airfoil/wing surface. With the temporally-synchronized-and-spatially-resolved high-speed visualization and infrared imaging system, not only the transient thermal characteristics of NS-DBD plasma actuation over the airfoil/wing surface were revealed, but also the anti-icing performances of the NS-DBD plasma actuators were evaluated under different icing conditions, i.e. rime, mixed, and glaze. The impacts of incoming airflow velocity, air temperature, and angle of attack of the airfoil/wing model on the thermal characteristics of NS-DBD plasma actuation over the airfoil/wing surface were systematically investigated based on the measurement results. It was found that the thermal characteristics of NS-DBD plasma actuation over the airfoil/wing surface are closely coupled with the boundary layer airflow and the unsteady heat transfer process over the airfoil/wing model exposed in the frozen-cold airflows. The anti-icing performances of the NS-DBD plasma actuators under the different icing conditions were found to be varying significantly due to the variations of surface heating efficiency of the NS-DBD plasma actuators. The anti-/de-icing performance of the NS-DBD plasma actuators was found to be improved dramatically by increasing the operating frequency of the plasma actuators. The findings derived from the present study are very helpful to explore/optimize design paradigms for the development of novel plasma-based anti-/de-icing strategies tailored specifically for aircraft inflight icing mitigation to ensure safer and more efficient aircraft operation in atmospheric icing conditions.