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Plasma to replace flight control surfaces...
AFRL Proves Feasibility Of Plasma Actuators
AFRL Proves Feasibility Of Plasma Actuators
The Air Force Research Laboratory is laying the groundwork to develop revolutionary hypersonic aerospace vehicles. AFRL is examining the feasibility of replacing traditional mechanical actuators, which move to control an air vehicle's flight control surfaces like wing flaps, with plasma actuators that require no moving parts and are more reliable.
As part of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Boundary Layers and Hypersonics program, AFRL conducted a wind tunnel test to evaluate the feasibility of using plasma actuators for airframe flight control. In AFRL's Mach 5 plasma channel wind tunnel, engineers used a strong electric field to ionize air around an air vehicle model to create plasma.
Air diverted by plasma heating successfully exerted force on the model and demonstrated that the plasma actuator concept is a viable area for further study and development.