Abstract
The present study treats a large-scale high-performance supersonic closed-cycle disk MHD generator using cesium-seeded helium plasma with 100 MW thermal input, and investigates the effect of the diffuser back pressure on generator performance through detailed two-dimensional time-dependent numerical analyses for the region which includes the generation channel and the diffuser. In the simulation code, the gas dynamical quantity distributions are calculated by the TVD scheme proposed by Chakravarthy and Osher. It is made clear that high performance operation as designed and high isentropic efficiency including the diffuser region can be achieved by choosing the diffuser back pressure appropriately. The generator performance is influenced by the back pressure and its highest possible performance can not be achieved in both the cases the back pressure is lower and higher than its appropriate value.
