Abstract In a recent publication (Kriegseis et al 2013 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 46 055202) we contrasted the variety of published strategies to estimate magnitude and distribution of the body force produced by dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuators. All approaches were applied to an identical set of velocity data, which was experimentally obtained by means of particle image velocimetry. Particularly, the determined force distributions of the above paper turned out to be beneficial for subsequent efforts to derive empirical plasma-actuator models. The purpose of this addendum, therefore, is to provide both the velocity data and the determined force distributions as discussed in the original publication. As such, a comparison of different empirical models based on identical velocity data becomes possible. In addition, numericists can directly implement the published force fields in so as to perform computational studies of discharge-based flow control.