Reduction of turbulent boundary layer drag through dielectric-barrier-discharge plasma actuation based on the Spalding formula

Abstract It is a very difficult task to develop a method of reducing turbulent boundary layer drag. However, in recent years, plasma flow control technology has demonstrated huge potential in friction drag reduction. To further investigate this issue, a smooth plate model was designed as a testing object arranged with a bidirectional dielectric-barrier-discharge (DBD) plasma actuator. In addition, measurement of skin friction drag was achieved by applying hot wire anemometry to obtain the velocity distribution of the turbulent boundary layer. A method of quantifying the friction drag effect was adopted based on the Spalding formula fitted with the experiment data. When plasma actuation was conducted, a velocity defect occurred at the two measuring positions, compared with the no plasma control condition; this means that the DBD plasma actuation could reduce the drag successfully in the downstream of the actuator. Moreover, drag reduction caused by backward actuation was slightly more efficient than that caused by forward actuation. With an increasing distance from plasma actuation, the drag-reduction effect could become weaker. Experimental results also show that the improvement of drag-reduction efficiency using a DBD plasma actuator can achieve about 8.78% in the local region of the experimental flat model.