NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF A DECAYING ARGON ARC

Abstract
The arc parameters of an electric arc that is subjected to rapid temporal changes of the arc current, experience temporal and spatial variations due to the effects of reaction kinetics, conduction, convection, diffusion,viscous dissipation and radiation. The purpose of this report is to present in concise form the results of the numerical simulation of a decaying, free burning, infinitely long, axissymmetric, laminar argon arc column. The current interruption is idealized as a step function in time and the thermodynamic properties of the plasma are described by a mode1,which assumes local thermodynamic equilibrium and quasi-neutrality. The transport coeff. are obtained from measurements performed on a free burning arc /5/ and from kinetic calculations /3,6/. The resulting system of equations consists of the momentum (1), energy (2) and continuity (5) equations and of the conservation equation for the atoms (6) and the thermal equation of state (7). This set of equations is supplemented with the heat flow equation (3), the particle current density equation (4) and the mass fraction de£ initions (8).