Feasibility Analysis of Helical Superconducting MHD Propulsor for Naval Vessels

In this paper, an MHD propulsor model for design and optimization is built, and it is used to achieve the most efficient propulsor with the given warm bore diameter and field strength. Then, such two constraint parameters are scanned within the range of 0.1~1 m, 1~20 T. Based on the result and current status of magnet technology, we can infer that it is very difficult for MHD propulsors to be used practically because of low efficiency, unaffordable cost, low power density, bad reliability and robustness, and stealthiness capability.