Dissipative instability of a nonisothermal electrically conducting flow between parallel plates in a transverse magnetic field

Abstract

Problems of dissipative instability (in particular, overheating) in magnetohydrodynamies has been studied in [1–6]. The Leontovieh mechanism of overheating instability is explained in [I] by the example of a stationary homogeneous plasma in a strong magnetic field along which current flows. The rate of buildup of pertt∼bations is estimated in [2] to explain the effect of overheating instability on the operation of an MHD generator. The effect of inhomogeneity in the temperature field and in the boundaries of the region on the formarion of this instability has been studied by the example of discharge in a stationary medium in the absence of a magnetic field [3], Certain cases of overheating instability in magnetohydrodynamies are considered in [4, 6], where it is shown that it can be aperiodic as well as oseillatery (Alfven and acoustic waves). Finally, the hydro-dynamic and overheating branches of instability in the ease of non-isothermal plasma flow in a plane MHD channel was investigated in [6]. But the overheating instability was examined without allowance for the dependence of the viscosity and thermal-conductivity coefficients on temperature in the limiting case S 《 R_m 《 1 and only for small perturbation wavelengths. The development of shortwave perturbations is studied below with allowance for viscosity and thermal conductivity and for a wider range of conditions A 《 1. Overheating instability over the entire range of wavelengths for the ease considered in [6] is also studied.