Unstructured grid simulations of plasma actuator models

The use of actuators has been seen as an effective means for controlling flow over plates, airfoils, and turbine blades. The use of plasma actuators is attractive since they lack moving parts and can be easily integrated onto different geometries. The potential capabilities of plasma actuators for boundary layer control have been demonstrated in numerous experiments. This boundary layer control is driven by a body force vector nearly tangent to the surface above the embedded electrode of the actuator. To study the effects of these actuators numerically, the computational model must solve both the electromagnetic and Navier-Stokes equations. Such a model has been inserted into an unstructured computational fluid dynamics code and initial tests conduced on linear plasma actuators.