In recent years the development of devices known as plasma actuators has advanced
the promise of controlling flows in new ways that increase lift, reduce drag and improve
aerodynamic efficiencies; advances that may lead to safer, more efficient and quieter aircraft.
The large number of parameters (location of the actuator, orientation, size, relative
placement of the embedded and exposed electrodes, materials, applied voltage, frequency)
affecting the performance of plasma actuators makes their development, testing and optimisation
a very complicated task. Several approaches have been proposed for developing
numerical models for plasma actuators. The discharge can be modelled by physics-based
kinetic methods based on first principles, by semi-empirical phenomenological approaches
and by PIV-based methods where the discharge is replaced by a steady-state body force.
The latter approach receives a recent interest for its easy implementation in RANS and
U-RANS solvers. Here, a forcing term extracted from experiments is implemented into
our high-order Navier-Stokes solver (DNS) in order to evaluate its robustness and ability
to mimic the effects of a surface dielectric barrier discharge. This experimental forcing
term is compared to the numerical forcing term developed by Suzen & Huang (1, 2) with
an emphasis on the importance of the wall-normal component of each model.