• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2012

Thermal plasma technology has been at the center of major developments over the past century. It has found numerous applications ranging from aerospace materials testing to nanopowder synthesis and processing. In the present review highlights of principal breakthroughs in this field are presented with emphasis on an analysis of the basic phenomena involved, and the potential of the technology for industrial scale applications.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.189-194
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• 2008

Measurements with a Langmuir probe, which are the most often used procedures of plasma diagnostics, can disturb plasma flows and change its characteristics quite a little because the probe should be inserted into thermal flowing plasmas. In this study, we calculated the characteristics of thermal plasmas with and without the probe into an atmospheric argon free-burning arc numerically, and investigated aerodynamic and thermal disturbances with temperature and axial velocity distributions. For the modelling of thermal plasmas, we have made two governing equations, which are on the thermal-flow and electromagnetic fields, coupled together with a commercial CFD package and user-coded subroutines. It was found that thermal disturbances happened to both sides of the probe, before and behind, seriously. Due to the aerodynamic disturbance, we could find that there were the stagnation point in front of the probe and the wake behind it. Therefore, aerodynamic and thermal disturbances caused by the probe insertion should be considered to increase the reliability of the probe diagnostics.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.48.4-48.4
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• 2019

Small-scale shear flows are ubiquitous in the universe, and astrophysical plasmas are often magnetized. We study the thermal condensation instability in magnetized plasmas with shear flows in relation to filamentary structure formation in cool structures in the universe, representatively solar prominences and supernova remnants. A linear stability analysis is extensively performed in the framework of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) with radiative cooling, plasma heating and anisotropic thermal conduction to find the eigenfrequencies and eigenfunctions for the unstable modes. For a shear velocity less than the Alfven velocity of the background plasma, the eigenvalue with the maximum growth rate is found to correspond to a thermal condensation mode, for which the density and temperature variations are anti-phased (of opposite signs). Only when the shear velocity in the k-direction is near zero, the eigenfunctions for the condensation mode are of smooth sinusoidal forms. Otherwise each eigenfunction for density and temperature is singular and of a discrete form like delta functions. Our results indicate that any non-uniform velocity field with a magnitude larger than a millionth of the Alfven velocity can generate discrete eigenfunctions of the condensation mode. We therefore suggest that condensation at discrete layers or threads should be quite a natural and universal process whenever a thermal instability arises in magnetized plasmas.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05b
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• pp.2506-2511
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• 2007

The coupled simulation is performed to find out the interaction of arc plasmas with surrounding materials in a thermal puffer plasma chamber. In order to be more realistic, PTFE nozzle ablation and Cu electrode evaporation, which are caused by high temperature of arc plasmas, are considered together. Pressure rise and temperature inside the chamber generated during the whole arcing history are investigated with the applied currents. It is very important to define how thermal flow and mass transfer are processing between the arc plasma and surrounding materials for further understanding complex physics inside the chamber. It is concluded that the result might be very useful to understand the mechanism happened inside and to design thermal puffer plasma chambers, but further experimental studies are required to verify the results for the more practical applications.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers B
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• v.54 no.11
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• pp.527-532
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• 2005

During the last ten years the new interruption techniques, which use the arc energy itself to increase the pressure inside a chamber by the PTFE nozzle ablation, have displaced the puffer circuit breakers due to reduced driving forces and better maintainability. In this paper, we have investigated the thermal flow characteristics inside a thermal puffer type gas circuit breaker by solving the Wavier-Stokes equations coupled with Maxwell's equations for considering all instabilities effects such as turbulence and Lorentz forces by transient arc plasmas. These relative inexpensive computer simulations might help the engineer research and design the new interrupter in order to downscale and uprating the GIS integral.

• 한국연소학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2002.06a
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• pp.179-184
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• 2002

Interaction between flames and non-thermal plasmas of DBD type has been experimentally investigated. Vigorous streamers were observed under flame conditions because of the increase of reduced field (electrical) at high temperature as well as the seeding of free electrons and ions generated inside the flame. Flame lengths were significantly shortened as the applied voltage increased on account of intense mixing by ionic winds and soot-induced flows. Flame luminosities severely decreased under plasma conditions, which means the reduction of soot, since the residence time was reduced because of the flame shortening. Temperature and major species concentrations measured by FTIR were not changed despite the plasma generation. which shows overall chemistries were not affected by non-thermal plasmas.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.117-126
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• 1998

In this study, the residue remaining on the silicon wafer during the oxide overetching using $C_4F_8/H_2$ helicon were plasmas and effects of various cleaning and annealing methods on the removal of the remaining residue were investigated. The addition of 30%$H_2$ to the C4F8 plasma increased the C/F ratio and the thickness of the residue on the etched silicon surface. Most of the residuse on the etched surfaces colud be removed by the oxygen plasmsa cleaning followed by thermal annealing over $450^{\circ}C$. Hydrogen-coataining residue formed on the silicon by 70%$C_4F_8/30%H_2$ helicon plasmas was more easily removed than hydrogen-free residue formed residue formed by $C_4F_8$ helicon wear plasmas. However, damage remaining on the silicon surface overetched using 70%$C_4F_8/30%H_2$ helicon plasmas was intensive and the degree of reocvery duing the post-annealing was lower.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.101-112
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• 2016

The characteristic analysis and fundamental test of a plasma generator is performed for drag reduction of a high speed vehicle. In high pressures, thermal plasmas is suitable for generating plasmas. The appropriate plasma torch is selected and used to generate thermal plasmas. The plasma torch, which can emit high-speed and high-pressure plasma jet, is suitable for generating plasma counterflow jet. In this study, the fundamental test and analysis for the plasma torch is summarized. Results show that supplying gas pressures and electrode gap of plasma torch are considered as critical parameters for generating plasma jets.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1989.11a
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• pp.145-148
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• 1989

Plasma diagnostics using Langmuir Probe is of wide application because of its simplicity in measurement of electron temperatures and densities. Current methods using simple circuit and analog meters, however, have troubles when they are applied to time-varying or thermal plasmas. To overcome these problems and expand the area of applicability, we have designed fast electronic voltage sweeping circuit in which we can detect digital data. Diagnostics using our digital Langmuir Probe is performed in various kinds of plasmas and the results are shown. Our method can be applied to measuring electron temperature and density of high temperature or time-varying plasmas. And we expect further knowledge of each state of plasma.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.196.2-196.2
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• 2016

The design and development procedures of SF6 gas circuit breakers are still largely based on trial and error through testing although the development costs go higher every year. The computation cannot cover the testing satisfactorily because all the real processes arc not taken into account. But the knowledge of the arc behavior and the prediction of thermal plasmas inside SF6 interrupters by numerical simulations are more useful than those by experiments due to the difficulties to obtain physical quantities experimentally and the reduction of computational costs in recent years. In this paper, in order to get further information into the interruption process of a SF6 self-blast interrupter, which is based on the combination of thermal expansion and arc rotation, gas flow simulations with a CFD-arc modeling are performed during the whole switching process such as high-current period, pre-current zero period, and current-zero period. Through the complete work, the temperature of residual arcs as well as the breakdown index after current zero should be a good criterion to predict the dielectric capability of interrupters.