Method for acquiring pressure measurements in presence of plasma-induced interference for supersonic flow control applications

Abstract

The operation of pulsed-plasma actuators for flow control is often associated with the presence of charged species in the flow and severe electromagnetic interference with external circuitry. These effects can lead to time-resolved transducer pressure measurements that are contaminated with electromagnetic interference effects or even transducer damage due to the interaction with charged species. A new technique is developed that enables high-bandwidth pressure measurements to be made in the presence of such rapidly switched plasma actuators. The technique is applied for the specific configuration of a pulsed-plasma jet actuator (spark jet) that is used to control the unsteadiness of a shock wave/boundary layer interaction generated by a compression ramp in a Mach 3 flow. The critical component of the technique involves using a pulsed-ground electrode to drain the charged species from the plasma jet before they reach the pressure transducer. The pulsed-ground electrode was shown to drain charged species into the pulsed ground prior to interacting with the transducer, which made it possible to make measurements without damaging the transducer. The resulting signals were still contaminated by electromagnetic interference spikes and so a data-processing technique was used to remove the artifacts and recover a largely uncontaminated power spectrum. The signal processing scheme used interpolation schemes previously developed for laser Doppler velocimetry applications. The data-processing procedure is demonstrated with a benchmark case in which the electromagnetic interference was isolated from the pulsed-plasma jet actuation effect. It is shown that the data-processing procedure removed the contamination from the electromagnetic interference at all frequencies but for the pulsing frequency and its higher harmonics.