Excitation of stationary cross-flow instability modes using a plasma actuator based on dielectric barrier discharge

The article presents the results of studying the stationary mode of cross-flow instability excited by a plasma actuator based on dielectric barrier discharge in a three-dimensional boundary layer on a swept plate with an induced pressure gradient. It is shown that the actuator generates an instability mode of a given wavelength with an initial amplitude of up to $2\%$ of the free-stream velocity, while the signal-to-noise ratio is no greater than $15\%$. As a result of a parametric study, a family of growth curves of the excited instability mode was obtained as a function of the parameters of the voltage supplying the discharge. It is shown that the initial amplitude of stationary cross-flow vortices generated by the actuator in the studied range of parameters depends quadratically on the overvoltage at the electrodes and linearly on frequency, which coincides with a similar dependence for the actuator thrust.