Design of an Active Noise Control System using Plasma Actuators

In this work an investigation into improving the efficiency and performance of atmospheric glow discharge plasma actuators [1, 2] applied to aeroacoustics is conducted. Recent studies have demonstrated that plasma actuator technology can be used to influence low Reynolds number flows. Previous work has shown that plasma actuators have the ability to produce a significant variation in the flow field that can lead to the attenuation of flow-induced tonal noise [3, 4]. The plasma actuator is a relatively new and promising technology for fluid and acoustic control applications due to their simplicity and lack of mechanical moving parts. In a previous study it was found that the plasma actuator was generally more effective at reducing cavity tones as the input voltage to the actuator was increased. However for a given voltage supplied to the actuators their effectiveness at attenuating the flow-induced cavity tone reduced as the freestream velocity was increased (Figure 1). To remedy this problem there are two avenues of research. The first method is to enhance the performance of the actuators by increasing the applied voltage to the actuator; using advanced materials to limit the formation of filaments and optimising the geometry. The second avenue of research is to develop a closed-loop control method to