MAGNETO HYDRO DYNAMICS-PLASMA DYNAMIC (MHD) FOR POWER GENERATION AND HIGH SPEED PROPULSION

The interaction of moving conducting fluids with electric and magnetic fields provides for a rich variety of phenomena associated with electro-fluid-mechanical energy conversion. Effects from such interactions can be observed in liquids, gases, two-phase mixtures, or plasmas. Numerous scientific and technical applications exist, such as heating and flow control in metals processing, power generation from two-phase mixtures or seeded high temperature gases, magnetic confinement of high-temperature plasmas even dynamos that create magnetic fields in planetary bodies. Several terms have been applied to the broad field of electromagnetic effects in conducting fluids, such as magneto fluid mechanics, magneto-gas-dynamics, and the more common one used here magneto hydrodynamics, or “MHD”. The simplest example of an electrically conducting fluid is a liquid metal, for example, mercury or liquid sodium. However, the major use of MHD is in plasma physics. (Plasma is a hot, ionized gas containing free electrons and ions.) It is by no means obvious that plasmas can be regarded as fluids since the mean free paths for collisions between the electrons and ions are macroscopically long