| Abstract: | One of the common regimes of operation of many laboratory and industrial magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) devices using liquid metals as working medium is the regime for which the Alfvén number A, the ratio of the magnetic and kinetic energy densities, appreciably exceeds unity. For example, for a typical MHD device 1] with characteristic length 0.1 m of the working region, velocity 1 m/sec of the medium, and magnetic induction 1 T (the medium is molten sodium at temperature 330°C) the Alfvén number is A  - 900. To simplify the investigation of the processes in such devices, one can use the approximation of a strong magnetic field proposed by Somov and Syrovatskii 2] to describe certain types of hydrodynamic flows of a dissipationless plasma in a magnetic field. In the present paper, the approach to the analysis of the self-consistent magnetohydrodynamic problem in this asymptotic approximation is extended to the case of an incompressible liquid with finite conductivity. A study is made of the closed reduced system of MHD equations obtained from the complete model in the zeroth order in the small parameter A–1, in which the magnetic field is a force-free field. An investigation is made of the free diffusion of  force-free magnetic field with constant coefficient a of proportionality between the current density and the magnetic induction in a spatially unbounded liquid, and the kinematic properties of a velocity field of the liquid in which the force-free nature of the magnetic field is maintained during the damping process are determined. It is shown that the complete class of such velocity fields is represented by the group of rigid-body motions of the liquid.Translated from Izvestiya Akademii Nauk SSSR, Mekhanika Zhidkosti i Gaza, No. 1, pp. 3–9, January–February, 1991. |
