Numerical investigation of supersonic MPD viscous flows with ionization

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Numerical investigation of supersonic MPD viscous flows with ionization

Takeda, H. / Yamamoto, S.

The self-field magneto-plasma dynamic (MPD) thruster is expected as one of electric propulsion systems employed for future space missions requiring heavy-lift transfer. In the MPD thruster the Lorentz force is generated by the interaction between the electric current and the azimuthal magnetic field. Since it is, however, difficult to observe flows directly in experiments because of high temperature plasma and axisymmetric geometries, many numerical investigations have been developed. For example, fully ionized 1-D, quasi-1-D, 2-D, and axisymmetric flows have been calculated. Also, partially ionized flows have been studied. Since the characteristic time of fluids fields is 10⁴ times as large as that of magnetic fields, the equation of magnetic induction derived from Maxwell's equation and Ohm's law has been solved as an elliptic Poisson equation. The magnetic field must be separately solved from the flow field. On the other hand, our group has proposed a numerical method in which both fields are solved simultaneously by using an implicit time-marching method based on LU-SGS scheme and the diagonal point-implicit scheme. This method has been applied to the self-field MPD viscous flows considering a finite-rate ionization and the calculated results have been well compared with the experimental results. In this paper, the previous study is further extended to a numerical study of investigating the effect of flow conditions such as the inlet temperature, the total current, and the rate of ionization to the MPD flow field.