Vol. 11, No.1, pp.38-42 (2017)
Ionic Wind Devices Prepared by a 3D Printer
S. Kanazawa1, W. Imagawa1, S. Matsunari1, S. Akamine1, R. Ichiki1, and K. Kanazawa2
1Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Oita University, Japan
2Department of Aerospace Systems Engineering, Sojo University, Japan
Abstract
Corona discharges are widely used in many industrial applications such as gas cleaning, particle precipitation, and gas flow control. Essentially, the corona discharge apparatus comprises metallic electrodes and supporting insulators. Typically, the insulators are made of plastic, ceramics, or glass. As such, limitations exist in the design and fabrication of the apparatus. We have previously introduced 3D printing technology in the development of non-thermal plasma reactors. In this study, we investigate the manufacture of ionic wind devices (IWDs) based on a DC corona discharge. Except for the metal electrodes, the IWDs were prepared using a 3D printer. The corona discharge electrode is a needle-to-mesh configuration. We evaluated the performance of the IWDs with respect to the gas flow velocity and its spatial distribution. Moreover, using a multi-device array, we examined the effect of array configurations comprising three IWDs. An advantage of the array is that it is possible to increase the ionic wind velocity and broadly control the air flow distribution.
Keywords - 3D printer, prototype, ionic wind, arrays