Eur. Phys. J. D (2013) 67: 261
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2013-40408-7

Regular Article

Hypergravity effects on glide arc plasma

¹ Department of Physical Electronics, Masaryk University, Kotlřáská 2, 61137 Brno, Czech Republic
² The Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC), Masaryk University, Kotlřáská 2, 61137 Brno, Czech Republic
³ Dutch Experiment Support Center (DESC), ACTA-VU-University and University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
⁴ European Space Agency (ESA), ESTEC, TEC-MMG, Noordwijk, The Netherlands
⁵ Faculty of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

^a e-mail: georgejewel@gmail.com

Received: 11 July 2013
Received in final form: 18 October 2013
Published online: 12 December 2013

Abstract

The behaviour of a special type of electric discharge – the gliding arc plasma – has been investigated in hypergravity (1g–18g) using the Large Diameter Centrifuge (LDC) at ESA/ESTEC. The discharge voltage and current together with the videosignal from a fast camera have been recorded during the experiment. The gliding of the arc is governed by hot gas buoyancy and by consequence, gravity. Increasing the centrifugal acceleration makes the glide arc movement substantially faster. Whereas at 1g the discharge was stationary, at 6g it glided with 7 Hz frequency and at 18g the gliding frequency was 11 Hz. We describe a simple model for the glide arc movement assuming low gas flow velocities, which is compared to our experimental results.