Semiconductor enhanced plasma synthetic jet actuator

Designing a plasma synthetic jet actuator (PSJA) with high efficiency and low driving voltage is a permanent and unchangeable pursuit for researchers. Based on the surface flashover phenomenon of semiconductors, a novel semiconductor enhanced PSJA (SEPSJA) is put forward. The electrical characteristics and jet performance of the SEPSJA are investigated based on electrical measurements and a high speed schlieren image system. The minimum driving voltage of the SEPSJA with a 6 mm electrode distance can be reduced to about 2.64 kV at 1 atm and kept fixed over a large range of air pressure. With the same input energy, the performance of the SEPSJA is better than the traditional PSJA with a short electrode distance restricted by high breakdown voltage. Owing to the long inter-electrode gap, the average discharge efficiency can be improved by 40%–50% compared with the PSJA. An increase of over 70% of the maximum jet velocity is validated by the schlieren image. The maximum shock wave velocity of the SEPSJA (545 m s⁻¹) increased by about 24% more than that of the traditional PSJA (439 m s⁻¹). It can be concluded that the SEPSJA is worthy to be further studied in flow control field. (paper)