. 2009, 27(0924): 81-85.
Plasma is one of newly emerging aerodynamic flow control technologies, with advantages of no moving parts and a short response time, which will become a new research field of great importance in the aerodynamics and plasma physics. This paper reviews the recent progresses in plasma flow control, including DC corona discharge, one atmosphere uniform glow discharge, and surface dielectric barrier discharge. At present, the surface discharge is commonly employed to control plasma flow, which concerns a weakly ionization discharge for low electric fields and the technology of "ion wind" does not have breakthroughs, so the maximum induced neutral gas velocity is only 8 m/s, without any useful value. The pulsed-periodic nanosecond excitation surface dielectric barrier discharge shows a higher efficiency for flow control, and becomes a promising research direction on plasma flow control. But the duty cycle of pulsed-periodic nanosecond is small, so it is still an issue worth to be explored for a small duty cycle to produce a great action efficiency. The plasma flow control techniques are of practical value, it is necessary to increase the velocity of controlled air flow up to over 100 m/s. Therefore, it is necessary to solve the problems in plasma actuators. An urgent problem needs to be solved in the field of plasma flow control is to improve the performance of plasma actuators based on studies on the mechanism of plasma flow control.
