JP Aerospace Blog » Magnetohydrodynamic http://jpaerospace.com/blog Our Journey to Space Mon, 28 Jul 2025 19:55:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Unexpected Results http://jpaerospace.com/blog/?p=5217 http://jpaerospace.com/blog/?p=5217#comments Sun, 03 Mar 2013 20:57:10 +0000 Administrator http://jpaerospace.com/blog/?p=5217 We fired MHD test 91 last night. This was intended to be a “null” test. The next thing we are working on is electrode gap width. The idea is at start with the electrodes so far apart that you don’t generate any power. The slowing move them together test after test until you find the optimum. However instead of getting all zeros we got a pretty strong spike followed by a weird wave. We’re still analyzing but I think this opens up a few possibilities.

]]> http://jpaerospace.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=5217 0 Magnetohydrodynamic Generator Test 90 http://jpaerospace.com/blog/?p=5212 http://jpaerospace.com/blog/?p=5212#comments Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:40:45 +0000 Administrator http://jpaerospace.com/blog/?p=5212 We did MHD firing test 90 last night. We have been getting a lot of fouling of the electrodes. Carbon builds up on them during the run and prevents current flow. In this experiment we coated the electrodes with an ablative fluid before firing. The idea was that it would cause the initial carbon to break off during the run leaving a clean electrode. It only needed to work for 1/5 of a second to see it in the data. OK, yes, this means we sprayed WD-40 into the unit before we firing the rocket engine. WD-40 fixes everything right?  IT WORKED!

We got much better power output. A new solution always leads to a new problem and this one is no different. The clogging carbon buildup was also protecting the electrode array. Without the buildup the electrodes were pretty chewed through.  The spiraling fragment you can see at the bottom of the picture is a piece of electrode number 1 moving at 83 mph (we measured it with the camera frame rate).

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