Analysis of Magnetohydrodynamic acceleration for use in hypersonic direct-connect propulsion testing

A previously completed UTSI study of the use of an MHD accelerator with seeded air from a state-of-the-art arc heater, was generally accepted as showing that the system studied had some promise of meeting the most critical hypersonic testing requirements. However, some concerns existed about certain aspects of the results. This thesis discusses some of these problems and presents analysis of potential solutions. Specifically the goals addressed were to alleviate the problems of: reducing the amount of seed in the flow, reducing test chamber flow temperature, and reducing the oxygen dissociation. Modeling techniques are used to study three design variables of the MHD accelerator. The accelerator channel inlet Mach number, the accelerator channel divergence angle, and the magnetic field strength are all studied. These variables are all optimized to meet the goals of seed, temperature, and dissociated oxygen reduction. The results of this thesis are encouraging, showing that hypersonic testing environments can be produced. Analytical solutions that satisfy all three goals of the thesis are presented and discussed in detail. This thesis extends the results previously reported by UTSI and further demonstrates the feasibility of MHD acceleration as a viable means to provide hypersonic flight simulation.