Plasma In Popular Mechanics

Plasma Actuators – Extremely complex physics explained with the help of semi trucks

Oct 21, 2015

Formula One cars are the vehicle world’s birds of prey sleekly exploiting aerodynamics to overtake weaker Formula One cars. Long-haul trucks, on the other hand, are built more like turkeys, as if drag, the air resistance that impedes a vehicle’s motion, doesn’t hamper semis the way it does race cars.

Unfortunately, that’s not true. Some 66 percent of a semitruck’s gasoline goes to combating drag. Plasma Stream Technologies, a company using science developed at the University of Notre Dame, thinks it has a solution: Use a plasma actuator to alter airflow—turning a turkey into a hawk—without actually changing the shape of the truck. Sounds cool, but, uh, what’s a plasma actuator?

According to Notre Dame engineering professor Thomas Corke, when an insulating material such as Teflon is sandwiched between two staggered, electrically charged copper plates, one exposed to air and the other trapped behind the Teflon, the surrounding air transforms into the fourth state of matter, plasma, which means that it develops an electric charge. The exposed electrode repels similarly charged plasma, pushing it toward the electrode with the opposite charge. As the plasma moves, it sucks neutrally charged air along with it, creating an air current the same way a fin or a spoiler would.

– CAMERON JOHNSON                                                                                                       
Popular Mechanics 

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