Numerical Analysis of MHD Accelerator with Non-Equilibrium Air Plasma

Abstract

Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) accelerator is proposed as a next generation propulsion system. It can be used to increase the performance of a propulsion system. The objective of this study is to investigate the performance of MHD accelerator using non-equilibrium air plasma as working gas. In this study, the fundamental performance of MHD accelerator such as flow performance and electrical performance is evaluated at different levels of applied magnetic field using 1-D numerical simulation. The numerical simulation is developed based on a set of differential equations with MHD approximation. To solve this set of differential equations the MacCormack scheme is used. A specified channel designed and developed at NASA Marshall Space Flight Centre is used in the numerical simulation. The composition of the simulated air plasma consists of seven species, namely, N2, N, O2, O, NO, NO + , and e −. The performance of the non-equilibrium MHD accelerator is also compared with the equilibrium MHD accelerator.