[Back]


Publications in Scientific Journals:

P. Bedolla Velazquez, G. Vorlaufer, J. Sequard-Base, A. Vernes, F. Franek:
"Altitude dependence of electrohydordynamic flow in an electrostatic lifter";
Journal of Electrostatics, 87 (2017), 32 - 44.



English abstract:
Experiments carried out during the last 50 years have elucidated the basic mechanism of the Biefeld-
Brown effect. Recent research has focused on establishing design rules in order to maximize the lifting
force resulting from this effect. For this purpose, a numerical estimation that takes the effect of
altitude into account is needed. In the present contribution, the thrust due to Biefeld-Brown effect was
computed by simulating the corona-discharge-induced electrohydrodynamic flow in a widely used highvoltage
asymmetric capacitor with the major goal to elucidate the dependence of thrust on the altitude,
pressure, temperature and humidity, respectively. Our numerical results reproduced the experimentally
observed decrease of thrust with altitude and shown that this is a consequence of various competing
effects.

Keywords:
Electrohydrodynamic flow Finite element method High-voltage asymmetric capacitor Corona-discharge-induced thrust Dependence on altitude

Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.