Abstract
Results of experimental studies on behavior of a supersonic flow and of an nonequilibrium plasma in a disk MHD generator are presented. The experiments with cesium seeded argon were carried out under high MHD Interaction conditions. Effects of seed fractions on static pressure distributions, flow Mach numbers, electron temperatures and uniformity of discharge in the Disk MHD channel were investi-gated. The results have shown that the flow is kept supersonic throughout the disk MHD channel when a sufficient Joule heating exists in a supersonic nozzle and the seed is fully ionized. It was found that there was an optimum seed fraction at which the power output became maximum and at the same time, the seed was fully ionized. Furthermore, an almost uniform discharge due to the full ionization of seed was observed. It is noted that enthalpy extractions and adiabatic efficiencies were increased remarkably, and the highest enthalpy extraction of 26.5% was achieved for cesium seeded argon. However. adiabatic efficiencies remained still low owing to large pressure losses.
