A Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Two-Temperature Plasmas

Abstract

We develop a formulation for the single-fluid/two-temperature equations for simulating two-species, compressible, non-equilibrium plasma flows. The divergence-free condition of the magnetic field is enforced via the characteristic decomposition of an extended nine-wave system. The source terms are modified appropriately to improve energy and momentum conservation accuracy. A spectral/hp element algorithm is employed in the discretization combined with a discontinuous Galerkin formulation for the advective and diffusive contributions. The formulation is conservative, and monotonicity is enforced by appropriately lowering the spectral order around discontinuities. A new MHD flux introduced here is the MHD-HLLC (Harten-Lax-van Leer Contact wave) flux that preserves monotonicity and resolves contact discontinuity better. Exponential convergence is demonstrated for a magneto-hydrostatic problem. Two tests are presented using the new MHD-HLLC flux. Also, the differences between the single-temperature and the two-temperature models are presented for two-dimensional plasma flows around bluff bodies are simulated.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 11, 2005
Accession Number
ADA458981

Entities

People

  • George Karniadakis
  • Guang Lin

Organizations

  • Brown University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boltzmann Equation
  • Boundary Layer
  • Cauchy Problem
  • Charged Particles
  • Electron Energy
  • Electrons
  • Energy
  • Energy Conservation
  • Energy Transfer
  • Equations
  • Flow
  • Galerkin Method
  • Mach Number
  • Magnetic Fields
  • Mathematics
  • Polynomials
  • Reynolds Number

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Finite Element Method (FEM) for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs)