Plasma flow at a high Mach-number

Unlike the case of static magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibria, where an expansion in large aspect ratio of toroidal devices is common, cases of MHD equilibria with flow are rarely treated this way, and when this is done the expansion tends to be only partial. The main reason for the difference seems to be the difficulty of expanding the larger system of equilibrium equations with flow. Here, we use a recent expansion technique which employs a variational principle to simplify the process [E. Hameiri, Phys. Plasmas 20, 024504 (2013)]. We treat four cases of MHD equilibria with flow, developing their asymptotic expansions in full, and for an application consider the effect of the flow on the Shafranov shift. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.