Flow pattern induced by a piston impulsively moving in a perfectly conducting inviscid radiating gas

Abstract

A self-similar method is used to study numerically the flow pattern resulting from the impulsive motion of a plane and a cylindrical piston through a perfectly conducting inviscid radiating gas permeated by a transverse magnetic field. The effects of thermal radiation are treated by the differential approximation to the radiative transfer equation. Numerical solutions in the region between the shock and the piston are presented for the cases of general opacity and the transparent limit. The influence of thermal radiation, the magnetic field strength, and the adiabatic heat exponent on the flow pattern for various cases are assessed. The general behavior of the velocity and density distribution remains essentially unaffected by the interaction between the radiative and magnetogasdynamic phenomena. However, the pressure profiles are greatly affected by the interaction; the effect of the magnetic interaction is to diminish the effects of radiative transfer. © 1989 American Institute of Physics.