Stability of Nonequilibrium MHD Plasma in the Regime of Fully Ionized Seed

Abstract

The stability of nonequilibriu m MHD plasmas in the regime of fully ionized seed, taking into account the ionization of the noble gas, is studied theoretically and experimentally. It is shown that the complete ionization of the seed is attainable with the discharge current and the corresponding electric field able to be achieved in actual MHD generators by reducing the seed fraction down to 10~ 5. The experimental data show that in the regime of fully ionized seed the plasma is stable in agreement with the theoretical predictions. Effective Hall parameters as high as 6 were obtained, while the effective conductivity remained at the value of the laminar conductivity. The application of this stabilization method to actual MHD generators is discussed.