An efficient computational model for inductive plasma flows

A new approach to the numerical modeling of high-pressure inductive plasmas is presented. The governing magnetohydrodynamic equations are discretized in a second-order accurate finite volume manner. A pressure-stabilized flowfield solver is introduced as an alternative to the staggered-mesh solvers used in traditional algorithms. It is argued that the widely used integral boundary formulation for the electric field is computationally expensive and cannot be incorporated into an efficient iterative solution procedure. A far-field formulation of the electric field is adopted instead, such that state-of-the-art iterative methods can be applied to speed up the calculation. The discretized equations are solved through a damped Picard method and an approximate and a full Newton method. Efficient linear algebra methods are used to solve the linear systems arising from the iterative methods. An appropriate linearization of the (strongly positive) joule heating source term is found to be important for the convergence at the linear level. The new model is tested on a 3-species argon and an 11-species air inductive plasma computation