The creation of hypersonic flows by a powerful impulse capillary discharge

Abstract

The possibility of using a powerful pulsed capillary discharge to produce quasi-stationary highspeed plasma flows with characteristic Mach numbers M = 3–10 and temperatures T = 3000–6000 K has been experimentally substantiated. In a rarefied gas atmosphere (p_∞ < 10 Torr), the transverse size of flow exceeds d < 3 cm and the duration of the working cycle can be brought to hundreds of milliseconds, which is of interest in problems of laboratory modeling of physical-chemical and gas-dynamic effects of interaction of bodies with hypersonic flows. Strong temperature nonequilibrium has been found (with the ratio between the vibrational and rotational temperatures reaching T_v/T_r = 3 and more) and anomalously low values of the effective adiabatic index, which indicates an intensive formation of polyatomic molecules and condensed particles in a carbon-containing plasma.