Performance analysis of an inert gas plasma Faraday-type MHD generator by coupling thermodynamic equilibrium ionization model with UDF functions of Fluent

Lu Tang^1,2 - Baolin Liu¹ - Qi Xia¹ - Aiwu Peng^1,2

¹ Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

Abstract
With the great improvement of computer performance, analysis of the complex magnetohydrodynamic behavior by CFD numerical simulation has attracted much attention nowadays. In this paper, based on the UDF functions of Fluent, Dev C++ to write the source code of a thermodynamic equilibrium ionization model to calculate the inert gas plasma electrical conductivity, coupled into the iterative solution of current density, Lorentz force and Joule heating, and then the MHD module to substitute them as an electromagnetic source term into the mass, momentum, and energy equations were used. The solver uses the FVM finite element volume method to solve partial differential equations. The residual and solution time steps of the iterative process are monitored to obtain the converged flow field and electromagnetic field distribution. The coupling calculation method is applied to the performance analysis of a supersonic Faraday-type MHD power generation system which can be used to evaluate the generator performance and study the plasma MHD behavior. Tables 1, Figs 15, Refs 19.