Plasmas exhibit a rich variety of complex, non-linear behavior and are heavily used in industry. Applications of plasma processing are quite broad; the ability of a chemically active plasma to change the surface properties of materials plays a key role in such industries as aerospace, automotive, steel, biomedical, and toxic waste management. For example, a plasma can be used to harden a surface to improve wear resistance. Another way that the plasma can affect a surface is to break down a gas to make it more reactive; the radical components of the gas then react with the surface and either remove or deposit material on the surface.

The objective of this work is to develop a conservative numerical algorithm that provides a robust, rapid, and accurate solution to the plasma fluid equations. To date, an unsteady, multi-dimensional plasma simulation has been written.

Most of the work is computational, but some of the work is theoretical. You need to know the theory (and have a good background in math) to understand what the computational results are telling you and also to understand why the computational methods work or don't work.