Artificial boundary conditions for compressible Navier–Stokes equations with electromagnetic fields

Abstract

We are concerned with the numerical treatment of compressible viscous plasma flows inside magnetoplasmadynamic self-field accelerators. The flow is modelled by a system of conservation laws extended by partial differential equations describing the electromagnetic field. Since the numerical solution of the governing equations is extremely expensive, the flow-field domain is decomposed into three model zones characterized by different physical properties. The compressible Navier–Stokes equations (extended under the influence of an arc discharge) near the accelerator are coupled with simplified models of extended conservation laws in the far field by using appropriate transmission conditions at the coupling boundaries. Details on the implementation and results of our numerical computations are presented.