Experimental Investigation of the Plasma Wake of a Blunt Cone

The flow field of plasma wake is studied by analysing the saturated ion current of multiple scanning probes with the method of chaos dynamics. The laminated structure of near-wake is verified. It is observed at x > 250 mm (x is the axis along the flow field) the far-wake flow field is similar to the free flow field, and turbulent structure exists in near-wake, but there is no turbulence in far-wake. The spatially intermittent character of flow field can be discovered, which seems to produce some relationship between the spatially intermittent character and the turbulence. The results show that the analytic method of chaos dynamics is sensitive to non-periodic signal.