New Calculation Method of Electron Density in Nonequilibrium MHD Generator and Its Application to Quasi-One-Dimensional Time-Dependent Simulation

Abstract

The authors propose a new calculation method of transient behavior of free electron density of the plasma in nonequilibrium MHD generator where cesium works as the seed atom. The method takes into account the minimum numbers of excited states and excitation and de-excitation paths which are sufficient to calculate free electron density in high accuracy. Calculation results obtained by the method, therefore, have almost the same accuracy as those obtained by the detailed calculation which takes more excited states into account, and also the method is simple enough to be incorporated in the time-dependent simulation code of performance of nonequilibrium MHD generator. Necessity of the proposed method is confirmed through the fact that there exists considerable difference between the calculated performances of nonequilibrium disk MHD generator obtained by the conventional quasi-one-dimensional time-dependent simulation code and obtained by the improved code in which the proposed method is incorporated.