The Focus on the Computation of Induced Magnetic Field in Magnetoplasmadynamic Thrusters

Abstract

Physical analysis of the magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters, especially ones with self induced magnetic field, demonstrates the interaction of applied electric and induced magnetic field to affect the flow field and accelerate it to reach the higher specific impulses. Such interaction besides changing the fluid state to the plasma, acts as momentum and energy source terms which should be predicted carefully. The former method which has been frequently used to compute the induced magnetic field is analyzed here and is shown that despite of its mathematical validity of the governing equation, it is disable to compute the induced magnetic field due to the problems in boundary condition. Therefore the accurate method is suggested here which shows much better abilities to study the induced magnetic field and can be utilized in performance analysis and numerical simulation of MPDTs.