Computation of Decaying Wall-Stabilized Arcs

The interaction between an electric arc and a gas flow is governed by the flow of mass relative to surfaces of constant temperature. This fact is used to introduce a new method for the computation of decaying wall-stabilized arcs in which the temperature is used as a free variable instead of the radial coordinate. The method is also applicable to more general cases and gives direct insight into the physical processes involved. An implicit two level scheme is described which guarantees numerical stability for any chosen time step. The method is applied to a decaying wall stabilized arc. The results agree quite well with published experimental curves.