Nonlinear magnetoacoustic wave propagation with chemical reactions

Abstract

The magnetoacoustic problem with an application to sound wave propagation through electrically conducting fluids such as the ocean in the Earth’s magnetic field, liquid metals, or plasmas has been addressed taking into account several simultaneous chemical reactions. Using continuum balance equations for the total mass, linear momentum, energy; as well as Maxwell’s electrodynamic equations, a nonlinear beam equation has been developed to generalize the Khokhlov–Zabolotskaya–Kuznetsov (KZK) equation for a fluid with linear viscosity but nonlinear and diffraction effects. Thermodynamic parameters are used and not tailored to only an adiabatic fluid case. The chemical kinetic equations build on a relaxing media approach presented, for example, by K. Naugolnukh and L. Ostrovsky [Nonlinear Wave Processes in Acoustics (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1998)] for a linearized single reaction and thermodynamic pressure equation of state. Approximations for large and small relaxation times and for magnetohydrodynamic parameters [Korsunskii, Sov. Phys. Acoust. 36 (1990)] are examined. Additionally, Cattaneo’s equation for heat conduction and its generalization for a memory process rather than a Fourier’s law are taken into account. It was introduced for the heat flux depends on the temperature gradient at an earlier time to generate heat pulses of finite speed.