• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.41 no.9
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• pp.700-707
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• 2013

Experimental analyses on a supersonic plasma wind tunnel of CBNU (Chonbuk National University) were carried out. In these experiments, a segmented arc heater was employed as a plasma source and operated at the gas flow rates of 16.3 g/s and the total currents of 300 A. The input power reached ~350 kW with the torch efficiency of 51.4 %, which is defined as the ratio of total exit enthalpy to the input power. The pressure of plasma gas in the arc heater was measured up to 4 bar while it was down to ~45 mbar in a vacuum chamber through a Laval nozzle. During this conversion process, the generated supersonic plasma was expected to have a total enthalpy of ~11 MJ/kg from the measured input power and torch efficiency. In addition to the measurement of total enthalpy, a cone type probe was inserted into the supersonic plasma flow in order to estimate the angle between shock layer and surface of the probe. From these measurements, the temperature and the Mach number of the supersonic plasma were predicted as ~2,950 K and ~3.7, respectively.