TIME-DEPENDENT NUMERICAL-SIMULATION OF ABLATION-CONTROLLED ARCS

Ablation-Controlled Arcs (ACA’s) are a particular type of high-density (~1026 m−3), low-temperature (~3 eV) arc used as switches and for acceleration applications. The wall material under high heat flux will usually lead to ablation and energy loss by axial convection transport in a cylindrical geometry. A zero-dimension (0-D) time-dependent code (ZEUS) has been developed to simulate ACA behavior. The code includes energy transport, equation-of-state, and electrical resistivity models. Particular attention is given to the equation-of-state and the determination of the charged state of multicom-ponent plasma under LTE conditions. The 0-D model is self-consist-ently solved by the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method. The numerical simulation of ZEUS was compared against both experimental and other theoretical results. © 1990 IEEE