The Fast Model for Ionic Wind Simulation

A. Samusenko[1], Yu. Stishkov[1], P. Zhidkova[1]
[1]Saint Petersburg State University, Research and Educational Center “Electrophysics”, St Petersburg, Russia
Published in 2013

Ionic wind is the gas flow induced by the corona discharge. Ions produced by corona are accelerated by electric field and transfer their momentum to neutral molecules. Using ionic wind one can convert electric energy to kinetic energy of air flow almost directly. The phenomenon of ionic wind finds applications in electrostatic precipitators and ionizers. It is difficult to solve the complete system of PDE (known as "the drift-diffusion model") which describe both the corona discharge and hydrodynamics. In unipolar approximation we take into consideration volume force of ions only and neglect electrons and the corona sheath structure. In this case solution time step and element size may be much larger than in the drift-diffusion model.