PLASIMO, a general model: I. Applied to an argon cascaded arc plasma

A non-LTE argon cascaded are plasma is studied and modelled with the genera l plasma simulation program PLASIMO. The structure of PLASIMO is Flexible a nd transparent, so that apart from the study given in the present paper sev eral other multicomponent stationary plasmas in a wide pressure range (10(- 3) to 1 bar), from local thermal equilibrium (LTE) to non-LTE, and with dif ferent energy coupling mechanisms can be simulated as well. The modular str ucture is divided into three main parts: the transport part which forms the heart of the model, the plasma configuration part, and the composition par t. The latter two parts define the input parameters for the transport part and are controlled by the PLASIMO user. The three parts are again divided i nto separate modules. The strong modularity makes PLASIMO easy to handle an d easy to adjust or expand. Results of PLASIMO applied on the cascaded are are compared with experimental data and show reasonable agreement. The infl uence of the boundary conditions on the simulation results is discussed.