APPLICATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF SUPERSONIC AIRFLOW ACCELERATION TECHNOLOGY BASED ON MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS

The electromagnetic hydrodynamics are widely applied in aeronautics and astronautics. The mag-netohydrodynamics (MHD) technology, especially, the technology of the MHD acceleration is a hot topic in this area. This paper analyzes the basic principle of the MHD acceleration, and then reviews its studies on three main aspects, that is, the MHD acceleration project, the hypersonic MHD wind tunnel development and the MHD propulsion explorement, including the key techniques and difficult problems. For the supersonic airflow acceleration technology based on the MHD, it is shown that the studies in the world cover a wide field, but the domestic studies lag behind, concentrating on numerical investigations; the mechanism of the MHD acceleration needs further studies; and there are still some engineering bottlenecks need to be solved.