A new mathematical model for studying fully ionized plasma flows in MPD thrusters

Abstract

The paper describes a novel mathematical model to study the physics of fully ionized plasma flow through MPD thrusters otherwise known as magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters. The developed model consists of a set of differential equations obtained by coupling the Navier–Stokes equations with Maxwell’s equations. The model developed was tested for various 1D and 1.5D cases. These simulations have been carried out for a special case of geometries called Tikhonov fitted geometries for alleviating the instability phenomenon commonly known as onset phenomenon in self-field MPD thrusters. The work was also extended to applied field MPD thrusters. A new equation for magnetic field was introduced to incorporate a virtual cathode. All the computations were carried out using a higher order integration scheme. The results obtained were found to be in good agreement with the previous work done on similar models.