ELECTRICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LINEAR HALL AND FARADAY GENERATORS AT SMALL HALL PARAMETERS.

Experiments were performed to determine the electrical characteristics of the linear, segmented electrode, Hall and Faraday MHD generators. The generator working fluid was shock heated Xenon at 7000K gas temperature, one atmosphere pressure, equilibrium conductivity of 850 Mhosm, and a Hall parameter which ranged in value from 0.7 to 2.5. The study was performed with and without magnetically-induced ionization effects in the generator. If the electrode voltage losses were included in the data analyses, the Faraday generator load characteristics were in agreement with the theory of Hurwitz, Kilb, and Sutton. If the voltage losses at the Hall current electrodes were included in the data analyses, the Hall generator load characteristics obtained under equilibrium plasma conditions were in agreement with the theory of Dzung. In the presence of magnetically induced ionization, the open circuit Hall voltage and the Hall load characteristics were on the average 30 and 10 respectively below the theoretically predicted values. The Hall output reduction is attributed to plasma nonuniformities caused by gas dynamic forces, Lorentz forces and non-uniform extra-thermal ionization effects. However, it was not possible to determine from the present experiments which of these three loss mechanisms was dominant. Author