Abstract. Radial distributions of Ar mass fractions and temperatures in plasmas produced in a wall-stabilized arc have been calculated. Modeling have been performed for many different mixtures of Ar+N 2 and three different arc currents. The obtained results show that the radial distributions of Ar mass fractions strongly depend on the chemical composition of the plasma. In plasmas containing large amount of Ar the distributions have local minima at the arc axis (in high temperature plasma regions), whereas in plasmas consisting mainly of nitrogen the distributions reveal maxima on the discharge axis. Those features seem to be connected with the dissociation of the nitrogen
