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Updated: Jul 2, 2026

Experimental Investigation of Secondary Flow Structures Downstream of a Model Type IV Stent Failure in a 180° Curved Artery Test Section
Published on: July 19, 2016
Anomalous flow deflection at earth's low-Alfvén-Mach-Number bow shock
Masaki N Nishino1, Masaki Fujimoto, Tai-Duc Phan
1Institute of Space and Astronautical Science/Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, 3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Sagamihara, Kanagawa 229-8510, Japan. nishino@stp.isas.jaxa.jp
Abstract:
Earth's magnetosphere is an obstacle to the supersonic solar wind and the bow shock is formed in the front side of it. In ordinary hydrodynamics, the flow decelerated at the shock is diverted around the obstacle symmetrically about the Earth-Sun line, which is indeed observed in the magnetosheath most of the time. Here we show a case under a very low-density solar wind in which duskward flow was observed in the dawnside magnetosheath. A Rankine-Hugoniot test shows that the magnetic effect is crucial for this "wrong flow" to appear. A full three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulation of the situation confirming this interpretation and earlier simulations is also performed. It is illustrated that in addition to the "wrong flow" feature, various peculiar characteristics appear in the global picture of the MHD flow interaction with the obstacle.
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