Capabilities of the dielectric barrier discharge actuator for dual-frequency excitations

A one-dimensional fluid model has been used in this paper for studying the characteristics of energy and angular distributions of electrons and heavy particles under the one-atmosphere pressure coupled by dual-frequency excitations. Using the current balance equation instead of poisson equation for solving the electric field equation. The results show that: the high-frequency source determines the ions and electrons densities, electron temperature, and the low-frequency source determines the ion energy distributions(IEDs) and the ion angle distributions(IADs). As the low pressure condition, there is an inverse relationship between angular distributions of electrons and the lower frequency. Namely, with the increase of the frequency, the peak of angular distributions of electrons are drop. Furthermore, in this paper, we compare the different modulations way of dual frequency excitation, including the superposition modulation and ring modulation. The results demonstrate that the the plasma within discharge channel systematically produces a local flow, reagardless of the modulation of the input excitation. The resulting time-averaged velocities as well as the fluctuating amplitudes differ according to the modulation. Dual frequency fluctuations can be produced with strong harmonics. This study can be helpful to effectively act on the instability phenomena, and adjust the linear and non-linear interactions occurring in discharge channel.