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SUMMARYAn experimental study of performance of the disk MHD generator with argon was carried out using a shocktube driven facility. An inlet swirl was introduced in the MHD channel in order to improve the enthalpy extraction and the isentropic efficiency. The experimental results were compared with those of the disk MHD generator without the inlet swirl. A high enthalpy extraction of 25.7% was obtained and the highest isentropic efficiency for argon was achieved at the same time in the present experiment. The measured static pressure in the MHD channel was kept lower than that without the inlet swirl. This has suggested that the introduction of the inlet swirl reduces the retarding force for the flow and that the increase of the enthalpy extraction is ascribed to the increase of the flow velocity and of the electrical efficiency. Furthermore, the flow without shock wave was observed at low seed fractions and low load resistances. At the same time, it was found for the first time that when there was no shock wave, the isentropic efficiency became higher than that with the shock wave.

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