This paper aims to explore the effect of a collection of water droplets on thrust and power as a function of operating voltage, frequency, and water adhesion on a plasma actuator. To our knowledge, no such work has been reported in published literature. The lack of published work in peer-reviewed journals is undoubtedly related to the many difficulties of this type of study.

 

The experiments showed that linear plasma actuators can recover approximately 38% of the dry thrust within 5 s after water being applied to them. For the best case, 83.5% of the dry thrust was recovered within 80 s after water application. It appears that a decrease in voltage from 22.5 to 17.5 kVpp at 14 kHz will marginally reduce a plasma actuator’s ability to recover thrust