Research on thrust performance enhancement of ionic wind thruster unit based on upstream auxiliary structure

Abstract The common ionic wind thruster unit consists of two asymmetric electrodes, of which the current and thrust performance can be improved by adding auxiliary electrodes. This paper proposes placing an auxiliary metal cylinder over the emitter, which is not used as an electrode connected to the circuit, improving the unit thrust and thrust to power ratio performance of the device. This configuration exhibits the characteristic of reducing current in situations whrere the distance between electrodes is large. Furthermore, by changing the position parameters in the device, the changes in thrust performance after adding metal cylinder are studied. It is found that the trust-to-power ratio increases more than 12% when the trust is 30 mN m −1 and <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>L</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> </mml:math> is more than 9 cm after installing the cylinder. A numerical simulation is carried out to analyse the flow field and the distribution of charge. According to the simulation results, it is found that the distribution of charge is squeezed under due to the existence of metal cylinder. Accordingly, it is proposed that the accumulation of charge on the lower surface of the metal cylinder leads to an increase in its potential and ultimately generates additional force. Through experiments, the changes in voltage of metal cylinder is verified.