Multi-Physics Mathematical Model of Weakly-Ionized Plasma Flows

Abstract

This work presents a multidisciplinary mathematical model, as a set of coupled governing equations and auxiliary relations describing the fluid-flow, thermal, and electric fields of partially-ionized plasma with low magnetic Reynolds numbers. The model is generic enough to handle three-dimensionality, Hall effect, compressibility, and variability of fluid, thermal, and electric properties of the plasma. The model can be of interest to computational modelers aiming to build a solver that quantitatively assesses direct extraction of electric energy from a plasma flow. Three different approaches are proposed to solve numerically for the electric fields with different levels of tolerance toward possible numerical instability encountered at a large Hall parameter, where the effective conductivity tensor loses diagonal dominance and becomes close to singular. A submodel for calculating the local electric properties of the plasma is presented in detail and is applied to demonstrate the effect of different factors on the electric conductivity, including the fuel’s carbon/hydrogen ratio and the alkaline seed element that acts as the ionizing species. An analytical expression for the collision cross-section for argon is developed, such that this noble gas can be included as one of the gaseous species comprising the plasma.