Ionic wind characteristics of an EHD micro gas pump constructed with needle-ring electrode system

An EHD micro gas pump using a needle-ring electrode system was constructed for an application of ionic wind to fluid flow operations without mechanical parts. The experimental EHD pump was consisted of a needle electrode and ring electrode which are on the same axis. The needle electrode was used as a conventional discharge electrode and the ring electrode connected to ground. Under AC corona discharge conditions, the ionic wind generation between electrodes was operated as a small-sized gas jet source. In this work, the ionic wind was evaluated for room atmosphere condition. The fluid flow visualization was conducted by a laser sheet monitoring method and the quantitative flow velocity measurement was a particle image velocimetry (PIV) with a high-speed digital camera. The characteristics of ionic wind velocity were analyzed as a function of the corona discharge current and the discharge power. This paper presents an experimental approach to investigate the dependency of ionic wind velocity towards the frequency of applied AC voltage. Beside that's, several electrical conditions of corona discharges during generation of the ionic wind are observed.