THE COMPUTATION OF AXISYMMETRICAL, SUPERSONIC NOZZLE ARC USING ADAPTIVE GRIDS

The computational difficulties associated with an arc burning in an axisymmetric supersonic nozzle are mainly caused by the region (known as the boundary) surrounding the arc core within which temperature changes rapidly. When the arcing current decreases, this boundary collapses rapidly towards the axis. An adaptive grid scheme based on the temperature gradient is used to solve the dynamic arc conservation equations in the computational domain. A direct grid adaptive scheme relates the solution in the computational domain to that in the physical domain without interpolation. Numerical results are compared with the experimental results as well as other numerical solutions obtained respectively by using a uniformly distributed, fixed grid system in the physical domain and by the solution adjusted method. A good agreement is achieved.