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Robot-LDA Plane Measurements And Smoke Investigations On A 30° Inclined Flat Plate In An Open Wind Channel With And Without Plasma Actuation Effect

Manuel Berger (1), Martin Wilhelm (1), Leonhard Güntner (1), Christian Mayerl (1), Tobias Kofler (1), Thomas Senfter (1), Lukas Zingerle (2), Martin Pillei (1)

1. MCI Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
2. MCI – The Entrepreneurial School, Dept. of Environmental, Process & Energy Engineering, Innsbruck, Austria

DOI:

Active flow control is a relatively new approach to influence the velocity vector field for plane airfoils or process engineering applications with a plasma source. The goal is to positively effect the point of separation to increase the lift/drag ratio or increase separation efficiency and to reduce pressure drop. In the presented study two approaches, the Robot-LDA measurements and smoke investigations, are chosen to find out whether the plasma source has an effect on the velocity vector field on a 30°inclined flat plate and the separation point. A flow rate of 250 m³/h resulting in a Reynolds number of 100 000 is chosen, since this is typical for already presented results within the field of plasma source investigations. With Robot-LDA in total 825 measurements points of the axial wind channel velocity components are captured twice, with and without activated plasma source. The measurement plane was set 80 mm x 50 mm orthogonal to the flat plate in the middle of the wind channel axis. The plasma source was powered with 14 kVp−p and 5 kHz. Due to stability of the plasma actuator, the LDA measurements were subdivided into eight regions. For the same configurations smoke investigations are performed. A chromium-nickel wire with a diameter of 0.213 mm is heated by an electronic circuit including capacitor and power source to vaporize liquid paraffin. The flow field is captured by a highspeed camera. Robot-LDA measurement results show a free-stream axial wind channel velocity component of about 15 m/s. In the shadow region of the 30°inclined flat plate a recirculation zone is found due to negative velocity components. At a distance up to 12 mm close to the plat plate, wall reflections dominated and to find valid LDA measurement results were not possible. With and without activated plasma source velocity differences between -0.5 m/s and 0.5 m/s are found. The biggest velocity differences are in the region of 15 mm to 45 mm relative to the tip of the inclined flat plate. For post-processing purposes, the 3D wind channel geometry and the Robot-LDA measurement results are loaded in ParaView 5.10.1. Smoke investigations show that the plasma source minimally attach the flow to the flat plate. This effect is higher with smaller flow rates (50 m³/h) than with 250 m³/h. Robot-LDA and smoke measurement results are promising that flow influence due to plasma has potential in various applications in future.

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