Transient Flow of a Magnetised Plasma due to Thermal perturbation

At time t<0, a steady stationary condition of a fully ionised gas exists in space, such that the velocity components, the induced magnetic field and a uniform temperature are given by (0,0,0),(0, 0,H_o) and Θ, respectively, in the rectangular coordinate (x,y,z). At t =0, a sudden increase of temperature is applied at z = 0. If the Eckert terms are neglected, an integral transform technique is employed to solve for the z–axis related transient flow (U,V,0),(H_o), and temperature Θ (z,t). For large applied magnetic field, H_o the flow is observed to exhibit disturbance modes some of which are oscilatory, and some streaming modes are seen accompanied by the expected decays. For a thermally perturbed plasma the flow is seen to be largely governed by conduction parameters if viscous terms are not neglected under the MHD approximations. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.