Curvature Effects on the Electromagnetic Force, Efficiency, and Heat Transfer of a Weak Low Profile Magneto-Hydrodynamic Blanket Propulsion System

Abstract

The present study concerns the numerical assessment of the effects of longitudinal and lateral curvature of a flexible low profile magneto-hydrodynamic blanket on its thrust, performance, and heat transfer. To this end, after validating the solver with the analytical solution of the Hartman problem, negative and positive curvatures are taken into consideration in lateral and longitudinal directions on the blanket and electromagnetic and velocity fields, temperature distributions, force density fields and profiles are extracted and compared to the flat MHD blanket. It is demonstrated that negative curvatures increase the thrust force and temperature of the blanket and the reverse occurs for the positive curvatures. It is also shown that the longitudinal curvature affects the blanket thrust by -2.5% up to 5.2%, its efficiency by nearly 6% and the temperature change from -25 up to 28%. On the other hand, for the lateral curvatures, the overall thrust produced by the blanket is affected by about -6% to +6%, the efficiency is affected by -10% to 25% and temperature change is affected by -2 to 6%.