|
With Plasma Actuators That Require No Moving Parts
|
||
| AFRL is laying the groundwork to develop revolutionary hypersonic
aerospace vehicles. Researchers are examining the feasibility of replacing
traditional mechanical actuators, which move like wing flaps to control
an air vehicle’s flight control surfaces, with plasma actuators that require
no moving parts and are more reliable.
As part of the Boundary Layers and Hypersonics program, AFRL conducted a wind tunnel test to evaluate the feasibility of using plasma actuators for airframe flight control. In AFRL’s Mach 5 Plasma Channel wind tunnel, engineers used a strong electric field to ionize air around an air vehicle model to create plasma. The plasma-heated air successfully exerted force on the model and demonstrated that the plasma actuator concept is a viable area for further study and development. The program focuses on characterizing, predicting, and controlling high-speed fluid dynamic phenomena, including boundary layer transition; shock/boundary layer and shock/shock interactions; and other airframe propulsion integration phenomena such as real-gas effects, plasma aerodynamics, magneto-hydrodynamics, and high-speed flow heat transfer. (Mr. R. Kimmel, AFRL/VAAA, (937) 656-7868) 5/1/2006
6/6/2006
This Information is public and may be distributed freely.
|
||
| AFRL
Tests Flexible Wing Technology - (No
Longer Available)
Final Ground Tests Preface First Active Aeroelastic Wing Flights (Archived) Wing-Warping Aircraft Has Debut - (No Longer Available) Wing-warping aircraft makes first flight - (Outside Link) (Archived) |
||
|
|
||
| Copyright Notice
All pictures and photos on this page, unless otherwise noted, have been gathered from pubic domain sources or are available under GNU License. Further documentation is available on our Copyright Page and our Legal Department. Article Quotes all have links to their appropriate source and are noted. All other text not so noted is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License All information on this page is used only for non profit educational purposes. All reasonable attempts have been made that no credits are missed, but with a work of this size omissions may occur. If you see anything of yours that has not been properly credited or wish to have removed please contact the Webmaster |
