Abstract The electrical properties of a gliding arc operating in air at atmospheric pressure are studied to evaluate its possible applications to flow control. The electromechanical behaviour of the discharge travelling at 4 m s −1 along diverging electrodes in a static magnetic field is analysed in detail. Two different methods are proposed to evaluate the velocity of the arc. An initial estimation is based on the arc current evolution during its transit and additional information is gained from fast digital imaging with a CCD camera. The displacement of the arc observed with short exposure time corroborates the electrical measurement and also exhibits the existence of luminous points on the cathode that can slow down the arc motion. In addition, a particle image velocimetry system is used to investigate the interaction between the gliding arc and the surrounding air. The displacement of the low current glidarc creates a low velocity convection (around 0.2 m s −1 ) in the gas and also generate faster structures up to 1 m s −1 directly in front of the discharge. These electromechanical effects could be used to manipulate the boundary layer region of various aerodynamic shapes
