Combustion stabilization using serpentine plasma actuators

This letter presents a numerical model for combustion stabilization with plasma actuators. Recently, we demonstrated that serpentine actuators induce complex neighboring flow structures due to pinching and spreading effects suitable for rapid flow mixing. Here, the influence of serpentine plasma actuator is numerically investigated on inner and outer recirculation zones of a gas turbine combustor. Beyond benchmarking with reported experimental data, we show that the swirl generated by the serpentine plasma actuators creates local low velocity regions stabilizing the flame. Such simple flow-mixing device does not need any moving parts, hence may be useful in the any combustors.