Plasma flow over an array of particles

Abstract This paper presents an analysis of heat and momentum transport to an array of particles from a flow of a collision-dominated weakly ionized gas consisting of electrons, ions, and neutrals. The particle longitudinal and lateral spacing is varied independently to study the effect of particle spacing on the flow and heat transport. The conservation equations for mass, momentum, and energy for the neutrals and those for ions and electrons are solved simultaneously with the Poisson’s equation for the self-consistent electric field. Solutions are obtained using a finite volume method and the formulation is based on a cylindrical-cell model. An orthogonal adaptive grid is generated to body-fit the particle surfaces as well as the cylindrical outer boundary of the cell envelop. The flow field and the temperature distributions are obtained in the plasma and the overall Nusselt number and the drag force acting on each particle are determined. Results indicate that the flow and transport around a given particle is significantly influenced by the presence of the neighboring particles. An increase in the lateral spacing between particles results in a decrease in the Nusselt number as well as the drag coefficient, whereas increasing longitudinal particle spacing leads to an increase in both the Nusselt number and the drag coefficient. The effect of side particles becomes negligible for lateral spacings greater than about five diameters. However, the influence of upstream particles remains significant even at longitudinal particle spacing of five diameters. Correlations that incorporate the effects due to neighboring particles have been proposed for the drag coefficient and the Nusselt number of an interior particle in the array.

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