Numerical Investigation of Hydrogen Plumes and Comparison with Experiments in STG

Abstract

Hydrogen plumes gained much interest from the fact that H (sub 2) is an important reaction product of a hydrazine thruster. H (sub 2) shows strong and temperature dependant rotational relaxation which quickly leads to nonequilibrium between translational and rotational temperature in expanding flows. In a hybrid calculation of the whole flowfleld, both methods (Navier-Stokes and DSMC) must model rotational relaxation consistently. Jeans' equation was used for Navier-Stokes, and for DSMC the Borgnakke-Larsen model with constant and with energy-dependent relaxation probability was used. The comparison with free molecule probe measurements of hydrogen plumes in the DLR High Vacuum Facility STG provides insight into the accuracy of the numerical models.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 09, 2000
Accession Number
ADA409190

Entities

People

  • Klaus Hannemann
  • Klaus Plahn
  • Mathis Rosenhauer

Organizations

  • German Aerospace Center

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boiling Point
  • Boundary Layer
  • Collisions
  • Distribution Functions
  • Energy
  • Energy Transfer
  • Equations
  • Experimental Data
  • Flow
  • Fluid Mechanics
  • Gas Dynamics
  • High Vacuum
  • Knudsen Number
  • Measurement
  • Mechanics
  • Rarefied Gas Dynamics
  • Temperature Gradients

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Aerospace Propulsion Engineering.
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Molecular Photonics/Laser Physics

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Hall-Effect Thruster