Supersonic plasma jets in experiments for radiophysical testing of bodies flow

Abstract

The action of differently oriented magnetic fields on the parameters of bow shock created in the vicinity of aerodynamic bodies placed into the supersonic gas-plasma flows is studied. For these experiments two types of the high speed plasma jet sources are used—magneto-plasma compressor (MPC) and powerful pulse capillary type discharge. MPC allows to create the plasma jets with gas flow velocity of 10 ± 2 km/s, lifetime 30–50 μs, temperature Te ≈ 3 ± 0.5 eV, electron density about ne ∼ 1016cm−3 and temperature Te ≈ 3 ± 0.5 eV. The jet source based on powerful capillary discharge creates the flows with lifetime 1–20 ms, Mach numbers 3–8, plasma flow velocity 3–10 km/s, vibration and rotation temperatures 9000–14000 and 3800–6000 K respectively. The results of our first experiments show the possibility of using gas-plasma sources based on MPC and powerful capillary discharge for aerodynamic and radiophysical experiments. Comparatively small magnetic field B = 0.23–0.5 T, applied to the obtained bow shocks, essentially modify them. This can lead to a change in shape and an increase in the distance between the detached shock wave and the streamlined body surface if B is parallel to the jet velocity or to decrease this parameter if B is orthogonal to the oncoming flow. Probably, the first case can be useful for reducing the thermal load and aerodynamic drug of streamlined body and the second case can be used to control the radio-transparency of the plasma layer and solving the blackout problem.