MHD undersea propulsion: A novel concept with renewed interest

摘要

This paper discusses the reasons for the national and international renewed interest in the concept of MHD seawater propulsion. The main advantages of this concept are presented, together with some of the technical challenges that need to be overcome to achieve reliability, performance, and stealth. The paper discusses in more detail some of the technical issues and loss mechanisms influencing the thruster performance in terms of its electrical efficiency. Among the issues discussed are the jet losses and nozzle efficiency. Ohmic losses and frictional losses inside the thruster. Also discussed are the electrical end losses caused by the fringing magnetic field near the end of the electrodes. It has been shown that the frictional and end losses can have strong adverse effects on the thruster performance. Furthermore, a parametric study has been performed to investigate the effects of several parameters on the performance of the MHD thrusters. Those parameters include the magnetic field, thruster diameter, all roughness, flow velocity, and electrical load factor. The results of the parametric study indicate that the thruster efficiency increases with the strength of the magnetic field and thruster diameter, and decreases with the wall roughness and the flow velocity. 8 refs., 8 figs.