THE MAGNETOGASDYNAMIC SOURCE

A study is made of magnetogasdynamic source flow with crossed electric and magnetic fields. The uniform electric field is normal to the plane of the source, and the magnetic field lines are concentric circles about the center of the source. The analysis is restricted to small magnetic Reynolds numbers and assumes the electrical onductivity is constant. Three different cases are considered. If the electric field vanishes, the flow is isoenergetic, and all solutions choke except one which starts from the maximum velocity at a point near the center of the source, and decelerates throug the sonic velocity to stagnation conditions at infinity. If the magnetic field vanishes, all solutions choke. For the general case when both the magnetic and electric fields are acting, a solution is obtained in which the flow accelerates at constant Mach number and pressure. At the center of the source the velocity and temperature must be zero. As the flow accelerates, the velocity increases linearly with distance, while the temperature increases with the square of the distance. Author