Numerical Investigation of Flow Fields in Inductively Coupled Plasma Wind Tunnels

Abstract

Numerical simulations of 10 kW and 110 kW inductively coupled plasma (ICP) wind tunnels were carried out to study physical properties of the flow inside the ICP torch and vacuum chamber with air as the working gas. Two-dimensional compressible axisymmetric Navier-Stokes (N-S) equations that took into account 11 species and 49 chemical reactions of air, were solved. A heat source model was used to describe the heating phenomenon instead of solving the electromagnetic equations. In the vacuum chamber, a four-temperature model was coupled with N-S equations. Numerical results for the 10 kW ICP wind tunnel are presented and discussed in detail as a representative case. It was found that the plasma flow in the vacuum chamber tended to be in local thermochemical equilibrium. To study the influence of operation conditions on the flow field, simulations were carried out for different chamber pressures and/or input powers. The computational results for the above two ICP wind tunnels were compared with corresponding experimental data. The computational and experimental results agree well, therefore the flow fields of ICP wind tunnels can be clearly understood.

Computation and analysis of the electron transport properties for nitrogen and air inductively-coupled plasmas

“…Previously, the first-order formulae of the electron transport properties and Gupta's collision cross-section data were widely used in the simulations of nitrogen and air ICP flows [4,5,9]. The expression of the first-order electrical conductivity can be written as [8] …”

“…Numerical investigations using computational fluid dynamics methods have been an attractive and interesting approach in past decades for studying the heating mechanism and the flow properties of an ICP flow [4][5][6][7]. As for nitrogen and air ICP simulations, computation of their transport properties, such as the electrical conductivity and the electron thermal conductivity, is one of the indispensable components in such numerical studies.…”

“…Because their method was efficient, easy to understand and accurate at that time, thereafter their work was frequently used in the simulations of ICP flows [4,5,9]. Meanwhile, because of relatively high-pressure operating conditions, ICP flows were found to usually belong to weakly-or partially-ionized plasmas [10].…”

Numerical simulation of the thermal non-equilibrium flow-field characteristics of a hypersonic Apollo-like vehicle

“…Instead, the twotemperature model. [20][21][22] is used to describe the thermal nonequilibrium effects of the gas during reentry.…”

Chemical nonequilibrium modelling of a free-burning nitrogen arc

“…However, the thermal nonequilibrium effect was not taken into account in these works. The only thermal and chemical nonequilibrium model of which we are aware is that of Yu et al [19], who investigated the N 2 ICTP flow in a wind tunnel. Some models have treated gas mixtures including nitrogen.…”