Experimental and numerical investigation on the interaction between Ar flow channel and Ar plasma jet at atmospheric pressure

Summary form only given. Although some researchers already investigated the effect of Ar gas flow rate on plasma plume length of Ar atmospheric pressure plasma jet (APPJ)^[1,2], the mechanism of interaction between Ar flow channel and Ar APPJ is still unclear. In this paper, by applying the optical schlieren system and 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation, the interaction between Ar flow channel and Ar APPJ is investigated. The continuity equation, N-S equations, and species transport equation of mixture gas are coupled together and solved by using the finite volume method. The experimental results show that, the Ar APPJ with the variation of gas flow rate can be divided into three modes: laminar flow, transition status and turbulent flow. The APPJ impacts a forward momentum to Ar flow channel. By considering the buoyancy force, electrostatic force and k-ε turbulence model in the 3-D simulation model, the interaction between Ar flow channel and Ar APPJ is investigated and the propagation mechanism of Ar APPJ is also discussed.