An experimental study on electrohydrodynamically induced silicon oil vapor flow under DC corona discharge

An electrohydrodynamically (EHD) induced phenomenon for a multi-phase fluid containing high-resistivity silicon oil vapor in the air is experimentally investigated. The EHD fluid flow is generated under DC corona discharges on a needle-plate electrode system, and forms an ionic wind field similar to the well-known flow pattern in fresh air. For the fresh air, the generation of ionic wind from a needle electrode is continuous below mill-second order under DC voltage applications, however, for the air with silicon oil vapor, the ionic wind motion is a different EHD flow phenomenon with not only the continuous mode but also an intermittent mode in mill-second order. These experimental results are analyzed by corona discharge pulses measured simultaneously with an optical observation of the EHD fluid flow. This work presents the experimental results of the EHD fluid flow patterns and the corona discharge pulse analyses. The effect of silicon oil vapor contamination on the ionic wind phenomenon is discussed in this paper.