Arc Mantle Studies in Dual Flow Plasmas

Differential interferometry, using the Wollaston prism, has been applied in the upstream and downstream regions of a dual flow orifice nozzle interrupter. The radial temperature distributions in the arc mantle and the sizes of the arc and mantle for a pulsed air plasma have been determined. Shock wave effects were noticed in the downstream region, leading to substantial differences between experimental results and the one-dimensional analytical model employed. Further, the experiments have shown that geometrical variations between two otherwise fairly similar configurations can lead to significantly different arc sizes in the upstream region.