Proc. ESA Annual Meeting on Electrostatics 2013 1 Characterization of Corona Wind in a Modular Electrode Configuration Adrian Ieta*, Ryan Ellis*, Danielle Citro, Marius Chirita**, and Justin D’Antonio* *Department of Physics, SUNY Oswego, Oswego, NY, USA **Department of Nanocrystal Synthesis, NIRDECM, Timisoara, Romania e-mail: ieta@oswego.edu tel: 315-312-6394 Abstract -- Corona wind occurs when a high voltage above corona onset is applied to an electrode system. The ions generating the corona current impart their momentum to the near- by neutral molecules generating corona wind and propulsive forces on the asymmetric elec- trode generator. Various electro-hydrodynamic lifters were built but literature is scarce on corona wind electrode interaction. A modular corona wind generator was built and the thrust values were measured for the system. Positive high voltage is used at the stressed electrode system. The apparatus allows for systematic change in electrode configuration and compari- son of the generated thrust. Data analysis has shown an inverse proportionality of the average thrust per coronating module with the number of modules used. While total thrust is increas- ing with applied voltage, it is also increasing with inter-modular distance. However, this rate of increase diminishes significantly for intermodule distance larger than 4 cm, showing less inter-electrode interaction. We hope our results may be useful in the design of modular corona systems aiming at optimizing corona wind thrust. I. INTRODUCTION High voltage on a thin wire creates a very strong non-uniform field electric field. The field causes ions to be formed. As the ions are accelerated by the field they impart some momentum on the surrounding air molecules generating ionic wind or corona wind [1]. The speed of the flow is proportional to the corona current [2, 3]. Both positive and nega- tive corona generates ionic wind. However, positive corona generates more momentum from the acceleration of positive ions [4, 5] with optimized winds [6] reported to reach 10 m/s [7] or more. Ionic wind can be described theoretically [4] and has been used for the manipulation of airflow around profiles [8]. For simulation analysis, a set of partial diffe- rential equations (1) coupled with Navier-Stokes and continuity equations are used       2 ; 0 ) (      (1) (Φ is the voltage potential; ρ is the charge density; ε is the dielectric permittivity of air). Corona wind thrust can be employed for propulsion in air of light objects [4, 9-12]. In this case the phenomenon is called Brown-Biefeld effect [13], named after its discoverer. Al- though there is interest in harnessing the corona thrust, there is still a lack of systematic