Plasma actuating propulsion system for aerial vehicles
AssigneeThe Boeing Company
InventorsVyacheslav Khozikov, Shengyi Liu
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Abstract
A plasma propulsion nozzle incorporates a cylinder having an inlet and an outlet. A plurality of substantially cylindrical planarly disbanded electrodes with sandwiched dielectric spacers is cascaded in an array to be concentrically expanding from the inlet through an interior chamber to the outlet for a nozzle. A voltage source applies a periodic signal with rapidly reversing polarity to the electrodes with differential phase applied to adjacent electrodes in the array creating and expelling plasma clusters at each dielectric spacer inducing flow from the nozzle outlet to produce thrust.
Claims8
A cascaded dielectric barrier discharge device for accelerating an air flow for propelling a vehicle, comprising:
- a nozzle having upstream and downstream ends;
- a dielectric barrier layer along the entire inside periphery of the nozzle;
- a first annular electrode around the inside periphery of the upstream end of the nozzle and external to the dielectric barrier layer;
- a second annular electrode around the inside periphery of the nozzle, downstream of the first annular electrode, and internal to the dielectric barrier layer;
- and
- a plurality of annular electrodes around the inside periphery of the nozzle, downstream of the first and second annular electrodes, internal to the dielectric barrier layer, and in cascading clusters terminating at the nozzle downstream end.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.