Investigation of impedance characteristics and power delivery for dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuators

Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma actuators have received recent attention for various flow-control applications. To enable system-level design and optimization of plasma actuator systems—including the actuators and all power electronics—equivalent electrical circuit models of the plasma actuators are desired. To address this need, the current/voltage/power behaviors of different DBD plasma actuators designs are experimentally characterized under sinusoidal electrical excitation at varying amplitudes (4 – 10 kV_pk) and frequencies (10 – 20 kHz). A simplified parallel resistor–capacitor circuit is used to model the behavioral electrical impedance of the actuators. The dependencies of the circuit model parameters are studied as functions of actuator geometry, excitation amplitude, and excitation frequency. Based on this analysis, considerations for electrical impedance load matching are discussed.