An Experimental Study on the Effects of the Layout of DBD Plasma Actuators on Its Anti-/De-Icing Performance for Aircraft Icing Mitigation

Recently developed dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma-based anti-icing systems have shown great potential for aircraft icing mitigation. In the present study, the ice accretion experiments were performed on to evaluate the effects of different layouts of DBD plasma actuators on their anti-/de-icing performances for aircraft icing mitigations. An array of DBD plasma actuators were designed and embedded on the surface of a NACA0012 airfoil/wing model in different layout configurations (i.e., different alignment directions of the plasm actuators (e.g., spanwise vs. streamwise), width of the exposed electrodes and the gap between the electrodes) for the experimental study. The experimental study was carried out in the Icing Research Tunnel available at Iowa State University (i.e., ISUIRT). While the dynamic anti-icing operation is recorded by using a high-resolution imaging system, a high-speed Infrared (IR) thermal imaging camera is used to quantitatively map the temperature distributions over the surface of the airfoil model during the anti-/deicing processes. Results show that, heat dissipation mechanism of the plasma actuator array in either streamwise and spanwise configurations differ one from another noticeably. Streamwise configuration shows non-uniformity downstream along the span of the airfoil/wing model. In the cases of the case with the plasma actuators in spanwise configurations, temperatures on the exposed electrodes are found to be higher than those of the case with the plasma actuators in streamwise configuration, due to convective heat transfer from the plasma actuation regions to the electrodes. It is also found that the optimum width of the plasma actuator’s exposed electrode is 4mm.