Production of nonequilibrium plasma and MHD interaction in disk MHD channel

✍ Scribed by Noritaka Oda; Masafumi Suzuki; Takayasu Fujino; Yoshihiro Okuno; Hiroyuki Yamasaki

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 329 KB
• Volume: 138
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0424-7760
• DOI: 10.1002/eej.1137

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The production of nonequilibrium plasma and the fluid flow with the MHD interaction are examined experimentally with a shock‐tube driven disk channel with no loading electrodes. For low magnetic flux density and low seed fraction, where nonuniform and unsteady plasma is generated, the static pressure decreases monotonically in the radial direction, although the pressure increases in the entire region of the channel in comparison with the value under no MHD interaction. For magnetic flux density and seed fraction above some critical values, a fairly uniform plasma is produced. The static pressure, however, is found to increase abruptly in the channel and the total pressure is considerably reduced at the location, where the abrupt pressure increase occurs. These facts imply that steady and uniform plasma should be produced without locally constricted strong Lorentz force to improve the adiabatic efficiency of a disk MHD generator. © 2002 Scripta Technica, Electr Eng Jpn, 138(4): 42–49, 2002; DOI 10.1002/eej.1137