Experimental characterization of plasmas for aerodynamical applications

The interest towards atmospheric pressure discharges for plasma processing of materials is continuosly growing because of their technological advanteges respect to low pressure discharges. Their use as new plasma sources for applications in the aerodynamical and aeromotive sector is relatively new. Then research aimed to the development of suitable diagnostics and process control tools is not so advanced and investigated. Indeed diagnostics of atmospheric pressure plasmas are very demanding because of the short temporal and the small spatial scales involved in the plasma state and in the different discharge regimes. Moreover such plasmas are often made up of intermittent and higly localized structures like stremers or microdischarges. We will presents results concerning the diagnostics of a single dielectric barrier discharge (SDBD) operated in a streamer regime and experimental results concerning the characteristics of the discharge, the influence of the discharge operating parameters and some interesting features observed in the properties of such intermittent discharges.