Electrohydrodynamic Pump Supplied by Unipolar Direct Current Voltage With Both Positive and Negative Corona Discharge

Abstract

Strong electric field applied between the two electrodes initiates a corona discharge, which results in ionization of gas molecules and induces ionic wind, also known as the electrohydrodynamic (EHD) flow. If an electric field is asymmetric, then a unidirectional gas flow can be formed causing so-called EHD gas pumping. In spite of many experiments with different electrode shapes and configurations such as needle-to-mesh, needle-to-ring, wire-to-rod, wire-to-non-parallel plates, etc., aimed at production of intensive gas pumping, the investigated EHD pumps were most often unsatisfactory. In our research, we proposed a new configuration of electrodes for the EHD pump, where all electrodes (excluding the first one and the last one) are simultaneously the discharge (on one side) and the collecting (on the other side) electrodes. Our electrodes configuration can be easily multiplied without additional space between consecutive electrodes. In such a case, a high ratio of pumping efficiency to pump size can be obtained. The Time-Resolved Particle Image Velocimetry technique was used to investigate the EHD flow generated by our EHD pump.